The Contending’s Megan McLachlan reviews Jordan Weiss’s Sweethearts movie on MAX, starring Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga: A romantic comedy with big laughs and bigger heart.
On X recently, people argued that if we had more Thanksgiving songs, we wouldn’t have to start playing holiday music so early.
I’d like to argue for more Thanksgiving movies so we’d have more of a buffer between Halloween and Hallmark — case in point, Jordan Weiss’s Sweethearts movie on MAX.
Sweethearts Movie Now Streaming on MAX
This romantic comedy stars Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga as two best friends attending the same college who decide to break up with their high school sweethearts on Thanksgiving Eve. Weiss and co-writer Dan Brier’s script honors the rat-a-tat patter of Nora Ephron’s banter, and the leads have friendly chemistry, but it’s what’s going on around the couple’s story that makes this a hometown you’ll want to go back to for the holidays.
Shipka and Hiraga’s Jamie and Ben left more than their significant others behind; they also left their friend Palmer, played by breakout Caleb Hearon.
On a gap year, Palmer faces an all-too-familiar crossroads and can’t decide what he wants to do with his life, feeling alienated as a young gay man (“A group of straight guys with a common goal is genuinely terrifying” quips Palmer at a bonfire). What this film handles so beautifully is the idea that LGBTQIA people are everywhere, including Midwestern suburbs, and Severance’s Tramell Tillman and Joel Kim Booster help guide Palmer through queer existence in a small town. Other movies would advocate for LGBTQ individuals to find their people in bigger cities while this one shows how integral they are to their small-town communities. (I like to think of it as We’re Here’s influence!)
In her directorial debut, Jordan Weiss clearly has a love and appreciation for the romantic comedy genre while also being spurred to take it in new, fresh directions. While the Sweethearts ending might cause some head-scratching (and maybe even hair-pulling), it makes sense when so many similar films would take the easy way out.
Sweethearts movie is streaming on MAX.
