Title: Maintenance Required
MPA Rating: PG-13
Director: Lacey Uhlemeyer
Starring: Madeleine Petsch, Jake Scipio, Katy O’Brien
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins

What It Is: Charlie (Petsch) runs her family-owned body shop, which was formerly owned by her deceased father. Beau (Scipio) works for a massive automotive chain and is tasked with expanding directly into the area where Charlie’s shop operates. Charlie has been chatting with a guy from Reddit she might be a little into. Little does she know, the man she’s been interested in and the man trying to put her out of business are one and the same.

What We Think: Many modern cinephiles have likely never seen Ernst Lubitsch’s incredibly charming film The Shop Around the Corner. I can almost guarantee, however, that they have seen Nora Ephron’s 1998 romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail, which was a remake of the Lubitsch film. This is yet another remake, and it is nowhere near as charming as Ephron’s version.

Where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks had undeniable chemistry, both in their initial disdain for each other and their eventual romance, that is simply not the case with Petsch and Scipio. They never feel like they genuinely want to be around each other, or even like they want to be in this movie at all. This is a nothingburger of a rom-com in a genre that desperately needs new life. Why anyone would choose to watch this over almost anything else is beyond me.

Our Grade: D-, This is just another unnecessary remake. I am the rom-com guy. This should have been right up my alley. It very much is not. The film is not well made in the slightest, and it is not funny. The second half of “romantic comedy” is comedy, and that would imply that something here actually lands.

Do not see this. There is nothing to it. Nothing worth your time. A huge skip on Prime Video and a major disappointment.