“Meet Cute in Manhattan” (2025) opens the same way many good rom-coms do — with a voiceover.
Jason (Terence Chen) walks us through the plot of common rom-coms, describing how often you may pass by someone in a big city, never crossing paths with them until destiny decides the right time. He explains that sometimes, all it takes to change someone’s life is a simple meet-cute.
The film continues as Jason heads into his best friend’s coffee shop after breaking up with his girlfriend, Chloe (Amanda Shi), for the 12th time. At the coffee shop, he bumps into Nora (Kendall Leary) and spills coffee on his Jeremy Lin basketball jersey, one of his most prized possessions. In compensation for the mess, Nora agrees to be Jason’s partner for his upcoming audition. The audition is for a commercial promoting a dating app, and they must pretend to be a real couple for the role. Their natural chemistry, despite having just met, lands them the part. As the two embark on the ad campaign, they start to fall for each other and find themselves in the big city.
A film about filmmaking, “Meet Cute in Manhattan” is not just a love letter to rom-coms but also to cinema itself. Jason, both a writer and an actor, struggles with writer’s block and breaking onto the main scene. While he craves authenticity and representation on screen, producers seem to push him into stereotypical Asian roles.
Only a few minutes into the film do we get our first hint at this meta-narrative. Jason, now dressed in a white suit and seated at an executives’ table, pitches this very story to a duo of producers. Like many others, the producers fail to understand that representation in media does not mean “media about representation.” The producers push Jason to make both characters of the same race for “marketability,” but the actor pushes back, citing that the film is not about being Asian, but being Asian is an important piece of the film.
This then goes to one of the film’s biggest highlights — its message of authentic representation. Too often, demands for representation in media are “pacified” by stereotypical roles: the Latina maid, the Southeast Asian cab driver, the diva black woman. These roles limit performers and artists of color and fail to showcase the wide personalities and values of their cultures. Additionally, “representation” is often fulfilled by roles that are little more than their race. “Meet Cute in Manhattan” begs the question: Why do all movies have to be about race without simply allowing racial diversity?
By directly calling out this inauthentic representation, “Meet Cute in Manhattan” introduces a more complex rom-com while not losing out on the simple charms that make it special. There are still two characters who fall in love and are changed by the whirlwind romance — there is still tension and conflict, and the characters still show individual growth.
Another highlight from “Meet Cute in Manhattan” is that much of the film is visually stunning. With inspiration from “La La Land” (2016), the colors seem to fly off the screen. The costumes tie the characters together as they grow alongside each other, while the production design helps to capture the magic of love in New York City. The intense color in the film also helps to remind audiences that this is a film about filmmaking, emphasizing the meta-narrative throughout the story.
Alongside the color design, the setting of New York City is an important aspect of the film. While New York was a common rom-com setting in the late ’90s and early 2000s, in recent years, the genre has seemed to shift to more rural settings. By setting the story in New York, there is ample opportunity to point out the role of destiny within love stories. While Jason and Nora have crossed paths many times in New York, including in the first few moments of the film, they do not meet until the coffee shop.
One pitfall of “Meet Cute in Manhattan” is how much it can feel like a scripted movie, rather than a story. While sometimes clever, the stiff dialogue can feel unnatural by not allowing characters to interrupt each other or sit in their lines. This, paired with the meta-narrative of the producers, can often feel rushed or inert. The characters, instead of being forced to have interesting or thoughtful conversations about their desires and motivations, become watered down. Nora, our aspiring architect, gets the short end of this stick. Instead of diving into why she is doing the work she does, she is quite literally cut off by the producers and Jason as they file the task of developing her character away for a later date. What could have been an interesting commentary on environmental justice in the fast-paced, capitalistic society of modern-day New York City turns into a joke.
Another pitfall the film falls into is the character cliches used to create more of a meta-narrative, with Billie (Mia Rose Kavensky) as the biggest perpetrator of this trope. At one point, she exclaims in the audition room, “It’s giving me main character en-er-gy.” However, interestingly enough, most of the rom-com character cliches work together to create a nostalgic film: the annoying younger sister, the high-maintenance influencer girlfriend, the best friends that only pop up to hear the main characters’ thoughts out loud for the audience’s benefit. Furthermore, the meta-narrative of the film that creates and emphasizes these characters, before calling them out for their actions, allows the audience to be in on the joke.
Despite these pitfalls, “Meet Cute in Manhattan” is able to blend a meta-narrative with classic rom-com tropes to create a story full of nostalgia. “Meet Cute in Manhattan” releases on video on demand, including Prime Video, on Friday.
