Movie review: What’s Love Got To Do With It

Eligible doctor Kazim (Shazam Latif) and Zoe (Lily James) have chemistry in the rom-com What's Love Got To Do With It. Photo / Supplied

What’s Love Got To Do With It (108 mins, rating M)

Screening in cinemas

Directed by Shekhar Kapur

Reviewer: Jen Shieff

There’s a raunchy Tina Turner biopic with the same title, and that famous song of hers, but this 2022 romantic comedy, directed by Lahore-born Shekhar Kapur and written by Jemima Khan — the Londoner who married the cricketer and went to live in Pakistan for some years — is as far from Tina Turner’s singing or life story as you could get.

It’s a fairly predictable rom-com, saying at first that it’s enough to like somebody and hopefully walk into love, but then suggesting that liking is not enough and finally ending up with a bit of a shrug. Actually, anything goes.

Eligible doctor Kazim (Shazam Latif) wants to please his solid citizen Pakistani Muslim parents, all of them Londoners. Ignoring the chemistry between himself and Zoe (Lily James), the lovely English girl next door, he willingly goes with his parents to meet Mo the Matchmaker (Assam Choudhry). In complete contrast with conventional Kazim and his apparently sensible parents, Zoe’s a party-going commitment-phobe with a flighty, tactless single-parent mother, Cath (Emma Thompson loving a comic role).

Zoe is a successful documentary maker who gets funding to make a documentary about the arranged-marriage process, focusing on Kazim and his family and starting in Mo’s office. Mo comes up with a beautiful, monosyllabic Pakistani girl for Kazim, Maymouna (Sajal Ali). Off the London contingent goes, including Cath and Zoe, to meet Maymouna in Lahore. The wedding takes place three days later, but Maymouna has a thinly disguised other side to her and it’s clear all will not be well.

Back in London, family truths come home to roost and Kazim’s mother Aisha (Shabana Azmi) becomes the film’s most believable character, handling the difficulties that arise with dignity, wisdom and a bit of depth. Eventually, Cath does too.

It’s Jemima Khan’s debut screenplay, following a career as a documentary maker. Truth presumably interests her. Only 6 per cent of arranged marriages fail, but her story raises and then sugar-coats the glaring issue: that couples who’ve had arranged marriages stick with it, pretending to love each other. She could have used her rom-com to explore why, avoiding over-exposing any real people.

Jemima Khan told Kim Hill (Saturday Morning, February 11) that her motivation in writing this film was to look at compatibility in selecting arranged and assisted “marriage candidates”, while also showing a joyful, hospitable side to Pakistan. Mission accomplished. There’s a bit of an insight into selection and a lovely scene in Lahore’s Anarkali Bazaar, plus splendid banquets, dancing and costumes.

Like Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967) or My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985), the film shows the vast cultural divide that exists between some groups of people but, unlike those classics, it’s a lightweight, easy-to-watch film, likely to be forgettable.

Recommended, for a fun couple of hours.

Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly recommended and Must see.

The first person to bring an image or hardcopy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to What’s Love Got To Do With It.