’Tis the Season - a rom-com with a punch: Love Hurts (2025)

This is a silly, silly movie. There’s so much goodwill surrounding Ke Huy Quan and the whole wast is so game, that it’s relatively easy to forgive how silly it is.

How silly is it? It wants to be an action-packed rom-com centered on a realtor who has a sordid, violent past, and is populated with hit men who write poetry and try to guide their partners through navigating break-ups. It’s a start and stop proposition, as well. When it leans into its Looney Toons set-ups and pacing, the film fires on all cylinders, but as fine as Ariana DeBose and Ke Huy Quan are, there’s a halting element when they get together. The voiceovers don’t help, either.

Also, Marvin’s gangster brought Alvin (Daniel Wu) is so cookie-cutter, that there is no sense of threat; the stakes are undercut by the fun of the mayhem and the comedic high notes, of which there are several.

A set-piece where Marshawn Lynch (once again showing off killer comic chops) and André Erikson show up to pressure Marvin into revealing Rose’s (DeBose) whereabouts is as cartoonish as it gets and is a kinetic tour de force. After being pummeled ridiculously, Marvin rises to the occasion and escapes, eventually running into Rose who tasers him.

An earlier fight scene at the Realty’s office party between Marvin and the hitman/poet The Raven (a stoic Mustafa Shakir) is similarly fun and later action sequences fit the bill, as well. Kudos to Jonahthan Eusebio, whose work as a stunt coordinator and fight coordinator for the John Wick series, movies like The Fall Guy and Black Panther and his second unit directing on Deadpool 2 and Obi-Won Kenobi, demonstrates how fight sequences can show a character’s make-up through movement as much as words.

Let’s talk about the script for a bit. Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard, and Luke Passmore, who all have extensive experience in action and horror genre work as writers and producers, have crafted a tight, in terms of runtime, vehicle, but with moments that drag in ways that don’t completely derail the film, but that show a kind of genre-stew approach. It helps that the dialog is sound, if not exactly Tarantino-level, but again, the delivery depends on the actors, who acquit themselves well. 

The thing I try to remember is that sometimes a flick isn’t trying to be more than a light entertainment, and this is where Love Hurts excels. It’s not saying anything deep about romance or the human condition, but it is a fun, fluffy bit of mayhem. 

At the very least, it’s proof that Ke Huy Quan can carry a film. This is nowhere near the showcase for his range as Everything Everywhere All At Once is, or even in his turn on Loki, but he is more than equal to the task of bouncing along through the silliness. Plus, it was a kick to see Sean Astin as his boss show up. Goonies forever!