Coming off the back of 2024's Mean Girls remake and being what many people labelled as the worst part of an already terribly received movie, Angourie Rice needed a win, enter Finding Emily. I believe this is exactly what she needed to be reinstated as the quirky, unassuming high school girl that she built her career on with movies like Honor Society, Senior Year, and the MCU's Spider-Man trilogy.
What originally seemed like quite a simple, upbeat, summer romcom ended up turning into something much more compelling and layered - mixing in elements of psychology to give this university setting a purpose beyond simply being a place where a lot of people congregate. While this did feel as if it stagnated slightly at moments, it never failed to find its footing again within a few minutes, returning that momentum.
One very important component of this movie was its pacing. Owen - our protagonist - is scrambling to find who he believes to be the love of his life, only having a few days before she thinks he's no longer interested. Knowing this, it came as a great surprise when Owen found 'Emily', yet there were still another 45 minutes left. Around this time, the momentum did fall off quite a considerable amount, but it felt earned. We'd gone through the entire last hour with non-stop stimulation, seeing how Owen may find this woman, that, once he did, we needed that chance to breathe.
Time almost stood still as Owen was finally talking with 'Emily', fulfilling what the entire last hour had been for, only for it not to be all it was cracked up to be. As Owen and we, the audience, realise this and come to terms with it, that momentum returns with full force as he finds what he was really looking for the entire time, even if he didn't know it.
I'd like to slow down for a moment and just appreciate the simple naming of this movie. Finding Emily is obvious; our main character is finding the woman who mistakenly gave him an incomplete number at the bar, whose name is Emily. However, that's not all there is. Owen himself even thought that's all this movie would be, but this title alone tells the entire story, but you may not realise it. Once 'Emily' turned out to be Amelie, and his fabricated perception of her finally crumbled, only then did he realise the 'Emily' he was finding, and who the title was really naming, was Emily Raine, standing right by him the entire time.
Not only this, but from Emily's perspective, throughout this movie, she is 'finding' herself after her hatred of love finally comes to a head, and she breaks down those walls; she's able to finally accept what's right in front of her, and what has been the entire time. Owen.
Speaking of, while this movie's focus is, of course, Owen, I thought the much more interesting main character of the two was Emily. This is a woman who is constantly deluding herself that her manipulation is all for research, for the 'greater good'. She is destroying his social life and public perception, all for a conclusion to a paper and a possible university grade.
Emily also has this entirely negative outlook on love. It's what her final paper is built around, and why she follows Owen for the entirety of this movie. It becomes clear throughout that this outlook is a defence mechanism, trying to block those feelings from her life and almost acting morally superior due to these walls - all because of a man who has no interest in, and hardly even notices her.
Who Owen originally believed was 'Emily', turning out to be 'Amelie', was such an interesting addition to this story. Owen even getting her name wrong not only accentuates his not really knowing anything about this woman, but also exactly what Emily Raine herself said: 'Emily' was simply a manifestation of what Owen wanted from this woman, which turned out to be completely false. He knew nothing about her, yet built an entire character of her in his head, which he was later disappointed in not actually seeing in her. Simply because she isn't what he wanted, love was.
Owen wanted love so bad that he was deluding himself into thinking this was his dream woman, all because she showed interest in him in the 20 minutes that they interacted. When he does face this disappointment and all these perceptions of his 'dream woman' come crashing down at once, he is able to notice Emily's true place in his life.
One thing I loved was that, while Emily's case study was originally on Owen, the movie as a whole almost acted as a case study on her, which we slowly come to realise throughout the course of the story. This entire movie is essentially Emily's dissertation, yet from an entirely different perspective. Starting this with a quote from Sigmund Freud perfectly encapsulates Emily's hypothesis, allowing the audience to have that knowledge from the opening scene. As we learn more about her ways of thinking, we come to realise how perfectly she's following her own hypothesis. Love is making her crazy. Emily doesn't see this due to her laser focus on Owen, even when he isn't following her school of thought. She believes that if he unknowingly disproves her hypothesis, she'll fail and ruin her own life. It's only once Owen is removed from the picture that she's able to finally see what's happened to her.
The 'council of Emilys' gave this movie another, very unique and interesting perspective - that of somebody who has no knowledge, or possibly simply doesn't care for Owen's intentions. While the possibility of Owen actually having been 'wrong numbered' is shown to us from the start, we begin to realise that, yes, this behaviour is quite predatory. While the blame is obviously put completely on the public-facing Owen, the 'predator' in this scenario is really Emily Raine, even if neither Emily nor Owen sees that.
Most of the backlash came from Owen emailing every Emily within this university, presumably containing a multitude of innuendos and terrible pick-up lines to sift through anybody who'll take him. The thing is, while the message itself is written by Owen, Emily is the one who gave him access by showing him every address, and Emily is the one who tells him to send it. I think it's important to note that Owen had second thoughts immediately after reading the message; he only sent it after experiencing this crisis and asking Emily for advice, trusting her implicitly. I'm not saying all this to paint Emily as the complete villain, but she opened up the floor for Owen to be attacked by everybody in the university, yet still hid in the shadows all the way up until near the very end, where she does realise her mistake.
Finally, while this isn't the perfect movie, it's a perfectly passable romcom with a little psychology flair running throughout and a ticking clock to give it some uniqueness. Even if it may falter in its pacing from time to time, it's ultimately able to pick itself back up and cross the finish line in a satisfying, yet open-ended way - with its deeply flawed, yet likeable main characters riding off into the sunset, just like any good romcom.
No AI was used in writing this article.