VALENTINE'S DAY MOVIE GUILTY PLEASURES: 'Set It Up' (2018)

Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to indulge in everyone’s guilty pleasure – romantic comedies! When you think of rom-coms, movies like When Harry Met Sally, 27 Dresses, or 10 Things I Hate About You may come to mind. But how about Set It Up (2018)?

(Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

Set It Up is a Netflix Original movie starring Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell as overworked and underpaid assistants who try to set their bosses up together in an effort to have some time to themselves. The film opens on Harper (Deutch) watching longingly from a window as other young professionals are allowed to go home for the day. It’s getting late, and Harper’s boss Kirsten (Lucy Liu) is making it clear that they will not be going home anytime soon. Somewhere else within the office building, Charlie (Powell) is in a similar predicament.

The two have a very fun meet-ugly when both of their bosses need “second dinner”. When Harper can’t come up with the cash to pay for it, Charlie swoops in to take it for himself. Charlie is pretty unsympathetic to Harper’s plight, but with her quick thinking, she splits the two meals into something that both of their bosses would be happy with. Charlie insists that Harper pay him back (with interest!) and they go their separate ways. (The painful irony is that neither boss is interested in eating by the time they get back... sigh!)

When Harper pays Charlie back the next day, they discuss their jobs. Charlie works for Rick (Taye Diggs) largely because of his connections to the promotion that Charlie wants, while Harper genuinely admires Kirsten for her sports journalism and wants to follow in her footsteps. They lament that neither have time for their personal lives. Harper is perpetually single while Charlie is clinging to a failing relationship with a model.

The two agree that their bosses “just need to get laid”. Harper is inspired and approaches Charlie with an idea: They know everything about their bosses, what they like, what they hate, what they want and don’t want, even before they know it themselves. And they’re in charge of their bosses’ whole schedules, which means they can basically orchestrate them to do anything. If they just set the two up with each other, then they’ll finally have time to themselves and their bosses off their backs.

And now they’re off to the races. Over the course of the next 45 minutes, the two try and fail and try and fail and try and succeed to get their bosses together. The two clashing egos are rocky from the start, and Harper and Charlie quickly realise that there’s also a lot of work involved in keeping them together. They do for their bosses what they’ve always done and maintain their relationships through manipulation.

The premise is honestly ridiculous, but it’s so easy to root for them. Deutch and Powell have an electric chemistry, and Deutch plays a wonderfully charming down-on-her-luck leading lady. Powell plays into his type here -- the jerky but handsome leading man who is a little too full of himself to trust him. But over the course of the film, I always find myself falling in love with him too. The bits are absurd, but the banter is perfect, so when everything falls apart at the end of Act Two, it really is devastating.

At the end of the film, after Harper and Charlie have both lost their jobs and are set adrift to figure out what to do with their lives, they run into each other one final time. Despite the many reasons not to like each other, they confess that they do, and they kiss in the elevator, finally giving the audience the second chance meet-cute we’ve been hoping for from the beginning.

Set It Up is a wonderfully rewatchable rom-com. My personal favorite moment is when Pete Davidson, playing Charlie’s best friend Duncan, throws an iced coffee all over Rick. If you want something absurd and adorable to watch with your Valentine, I couldn’t recommend Set It Up enough!