Friendzone Parent Guide

Pediatric nurse Thibault (Mickael Lumiere) is not romantically successful, even though his best friends are all women. While at a bachelorette party for one of his friends, he has a chance encounter with Rose (Eva Danino) and the two immediately hit it off. Unfortunately for Thibault, he is falling in love with her, but Rose only sees him as a friend. With the help of his friends (Manon Azem, Fadily Camara, Constance Arnoult) Thibault tries to break free of the friendzone and win her over.

Romantic comedies are tricky, and I think that’s a large part of why they’ve lost popularity over the last couple of decades. It’s difficult to have romantic conflict that doesn’t end up being abusive, creepy, or plain old misogynistic. In most cases, the woman ends up settling for a partner who has relied on lies, games, and manipulation for the entirety of the runtime and modern audiences are just not as receptive to that as they used to be. Unfortunately for Friendzone, that’s exactly where it fails. Thibault starts out awkward but charming and sweet. He then becomes a Grade A Jerk over the course of the story, manipulating Rose in increasingly sociopathic ways, until the end where he finally realizes the error of his ways and apologizes after a montage of him looking sad and remorseful. Yes, he learns a lesson, but is that enough reason for Rose to forgive him? Debatable. She’s young and cute and French, I’m sure she could do much better.

When all is said and done, Friendzone ends up being just another generic rom-com. Problematic story aside, the movie doesn’t have anything interesting to say, or anything to add to the genre. The acting is pretty good and there’s some colorful and interesting camera work, but that’s hardly enough to make it worth 90 minutes of anyone’s time. I will also say, the English dubs are terrible. I only had them on for about four minutes before I couldn’t stand it anymore and switched it back to the original French dialogue with English subtitles.

It probably goes without saying at this point, but this is not a family friendly production. Sex is a big topic of both discussion and action, along with a decent amount of swearing, drinking, and drug use. But really, even if none of that was in the film, I still wouldn’t recommend it just purely for its lack of self-awareness and failure to produce anything unique or new.