Movie Review: ‘Finding Emily’ is the British rom-com we’ve been waiting for

Late August can be a depressing time at the movie theater, but there’s a gem to be found in the British romantic comedy “Finding Emily,” which opens in theaters Friday. Here, finally, is a smart, funny and sweet story about young love that moviegoing audiences deserve. Yes, the setup is contrived — it even fits almost entirely into a movie trailer — but it’s in a way that’s familiar and grounded enough, and unlike the insanely dystopian “One Night Only.” There are no ridiculous laws against premarital sex on this university campus in Manchester; Just regular young people getting in their own way.

The movie begins with one of those too-good-to-be-true meet cutes, where Owen (Spike Fearn) finds his dream girl (Sadie Soverall) who is dressed in a fairy costume and seems to be into him. Brit pop plays in the background and the world seems to fade away. The night takes her elsewhere with her friends, but not before she gives her number to Owen. He leaves on cloud nine, wondering how much time to let pass before he texts. But there’s a problem: The number is one digit short. Was it intentional? Was it a mistake? He chooses to believe the latter and sets off to find her, knowing only her first name, Emily.

No one is especially charmed by Owen’s desperate quest to find Emily on campus. Rachel Hirons’ script understands a fundamental truth about romantic comedies and the grand gesture — they only work if the other party is into it. If they’re not into it, at best, it’s creepy. At worst, it’s the beginning of a horror movie. But then another Emily ( Angourie Rice ) emerges and, after giving Owen a hard time and name checking the manic pixie dream girl trope, decides to help. What the audience knows, however, and he doesn’t, is that this Emily, an American, has an ulterior motive. She’s trying to prove, for a thesis that will get her a job and allow her to stay in the country, that love drives people mad. “He’s my very own Stanford Prison Experiment,” she excitedly tells a friend.

You can see where this is going, right? Even if it’s predictable, it’s also really quite sharp and charming under Alicia MacDonald’s direction, both nodding to the grand tradition of 90s Brit rom-coms (“Finding Emily” shares producers with “Bridget Jones’s Diary”) while also adding a grain of Gen Z salt to the proceedings. You can bet that there are some Serious Concerns raised by women’s groups on campus when Owen, who is not a student but an employee on probationary hire, emails all the Emilys.

Fearn, as Owen, manages to never cross the line into creepy. With his very Noel Gallagher haircut and skinny, twitchy innocence, he’s flustered by the attention and accusations of incel-dom thrown his way. Rice, meanwhile, has a more challenging hurdle to win over the audience, but we’ve forgiven worse rom-com offenses, right? And, unlike the alien beauty of the stars of “One Night Only,” her costumes and manner seem at least a little more relatable (while also knowing that she too is a beautiful movie star).

One especially fresh aspect of “Finding Emily” is that the will-they-won’t-they isn’t even the real driving force of our interest. Are we really rooting for Owen and American Emily? Do we think they might, gasp, last if it happens? This movie knows what it is. It knows that its leads are in their early 20s, and it knows that we can enjoy spending time with them without investing too much in a possible relationship. “Finding Emily” is just one story in their lives.

It’s bleak out there for romantic comedy fans, and it seems lately that the flashiest of the meager offerings are the most suspect. It’s not that these movies aren’t being made at all, it’s just that the ones that seem to get the most attention have been the worst in recent months, like, say, “Office Romance.” It’s promising that “Finding Emily” is getting a theatrical release, perhaps it won’t be lost in the streaming ether like the very good “Voicemails for Isabelle,” which spent some time atop the Netflix charts but has basically disappeared since. And it’s notable that “Voicemails” was also written and directed by a woman (Leah McKendrick); Perhaps all studios should take note where the recent good ones are coming from.

“Finding Emily,” a Focus Features release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “language, drug references, sexual references and some crude material.” Running time: 111 minutes. Three stars out of four.