Love Life

Just when a viewer thinks the show is mainly frosting with little to no cake, “Love Life” steers into far more substantial and surprising territory. By the middle episodes, Darby hits some real road bumps. ... Say what you must about Kendrick’s trademark cutesiness, it’s her acting chops that really pay off here. ... “Love Life” evolves into a serious rumination on self-awareness.

Endearing even when she's being aggravating, Kendrick lets us in on Darby's deep-rooted insecurities. [25 May - 7 Jun 2020, p.2]

Love Life manages to wrestle some piquant insights out of its limited constraints. The writing is keen to the subtle pleasures and indignities of sex and love, the frustrations that arise out of regular problems rather than the outsized absolutes so often created for TV. ... Kendrick is more compelling in the serious moments than she is with the funny stuff, as is true of the show on the whole.

No matter which way you slice it, it’s evident from the first seven episodes I was able to screen the team behind and in front of the Love Life cameras is a shrewd one keen to freshen up a very familiar premise.

Creator Sam Boyd has given us a female protagonist who is not only very familiar, she seems to be living by a set of rules that are distressingly outdated. ... Love Life is at its best when it examines how Darby's non-romantic connections influence her approach to finding a significant other.

“Love Life” lacks the HBO edge but it’s still the HBOiest of HBO Max’s early offerings, even as the characterization of Kendrick’s Darby is closer to Ally McBeal than Lena Dunham’s Hannah on “Girls.”

She and the scriptwriters have a tall order making the undulations of one stranger's love life interesting enough to sustain ten half-hour episodes. I'm not sure I'd stick that for my dearest friend. But it really does get better as it progresses.

The show is stuffed with references to romantic comedies of the past, from Love Actually all the way back to Jane Austen. Love Life displays this self-knowledge then doesn’t quite know what to do with it. A fun watch, but it feels like a wasted opportunity.

A few more risks could have been taken, especially in its portrayal of a rather blandly wholesome lead, but it’s an easily binged watch, with narrator Lesley Manville bookending each episode soothingly. If it’s to return, let’s just hope the life at its centre is one that’s a bit easier for us to love.

“Love Life’s” meandering uncertainty about its story leads to a great-looking show wobbly in a way a cabler graded on quality every time would likely force to refine and redefine. As it stands, though, “Love Life” is a piece of content that makes for amiable company and that doesn’t stand out as particularly grievous; as part of a library graded on capacity rather than curation, it fits right in.

One would like to be less conscious of the fact that Darby is living a lie, or a series of them, or indeed is a character in a TV series; nevertheless, anyone who has has been in a relationship of any length will find some behavior here to accuse themselves of. ... Kendrick is well cast, and as an excuse to hang out in her company, “Love Life,” frustrating as it sometimes is, will do.

It’s “Sex and the City” Lite, with none of the sparkle and of-the-moment zeitgeist of that HBO hit.

By the end of the eight episodes screened for critics (out of the full season’s 10), the only indicators of Darby’s growth are material ones: better clothes, accessories, and apartments.

“Love Life” has its mild virtues for rom-com addicts who enjoy a good meet-cute every now and again. But the anthology show, starring and executive produced by Anna Kendrick, trades in tropes that are as overused on TV as the word “tropes” is in TV criticism. ... The flatness of the plot turns, many of which recall the less sexual arcs in “Sex and the City,” is compensated, to some degree, by the characters and the actors surrounding Darby.

“Love Life” treads well-worn ground without blazing a unique path for itself. Like most outings in the genre, it’s not without a fair share of charm to make the time enjoyable – although these pleasures stem largely from star Anna Kendrick and her earnest embrace of the middling material.

"Love Life" is not "My Best Friend's Wedding." At its best, it falls squarely in the "thing I wouldn't mind falling asleep to on a plane" genre. ... If "Love Life" suffers from its stale concept and execution, it is done no further favors by Kendrick's rote performance.

“Love Life” is far from the first story to follow a person who has centered her own life on the pursuit of romantic love, nor is it the first to acknowledge that she’s doing so, to her detriment. “Love Life” makes the mistake of doing the same, and that’s apparent from the first hour. That it recovers at all is due mainly to Kendrick.

It's a toothless, dull proof-of-concept that any network or service could have produced, made more worrisome if it's also meant to be a toothless, dull proof-of-concept for HBO Max. ... The semi-remarkable thing is how frequently Kendrick holds the show together. She's funny even when the scripts aren't.

“Love Life” really only cares about one story, not bothering to flesh out compelling supporting characters or even define its lead beyond her relationships, which restricts its time-hopping structure and ambitious premise to one-note dreck.

I was not prepared for how much I disliked early episodes of this show ... Showrunners Sam Boyd and Bridget Bedard (backed by a team of executive producers that includes Kendrick and Paul Feig) spend much of the season leaning on worn-out romance tropes and overplaying the lead’s adorkable charm. It’s all too expected. ... And when, to its credit, the show finally heads for novel territory about five episodes in, it’s too little, too late.