Romcom with sci-fi twist stacks up its implausibilities but Zoë Chao’s performance is engaging and believable
“Are you real or are you one of those manic pixie dream girls?” a man asks a woman he met five hours earlier. The two are in a bar downing shots: he is Bart (Finn Wittrock), a
Los Angeles writer whose life is a mess, and she is Vienna (Zoë Chao) a hot, funny cool girl carrying a handbag stuffed with cash. She picks him up in a half-empty cinema and seems too good to be true.
And disappointingly, Vienna does turn out to be more fantasy girl than an actual character in this fluffy romance. Like the classic MPDG she exists mostly for the purpose of saving Bart. It’s a shame because Chao (an
Actor I’ve not seen before) is funny and warm, with a sharpness that gives her quirky up-for-anything character some added layers of realness.