God is love.  This is taken from the end of 1 John 4:8.  Actually, you should read the whole of chapter four.  It contains some of the best expressions of the benefits of a relationship with God found anywhere in Scripture.  This idea has also been extensively written about by St. John Paul the Great.  Given how important is love, it is no wonder that he recently was named “Great” by the Church.  He gave the intellectual basis for a universal emotion that has become the Church’s mission, no matter what anyone has to say about it.  It is with this as running subtext in my heart and mind that today’s film, Love, Guaranteed (2020), caught my eye.  As the title suggests, it explores whether something like love can be promised or your money back.  In the process, it calls into question many of prevailing ways we have come to think about modern relationships, all in a courtroom setting.

Indeed, we see lawyer Susan Whitaker (Rachel Leigh Cook) in such a setting early on in Love, Guaranteed.  She is giving closing arguments in a lawsuit on behalf of an elderly client named Jerome (Alvin Sanders), who had been injured by a Seattle city bus.  She is a crusading civil litigator, pursuing cases for those who cannot afford to legally defend themselves.  Unsurprisingly, she is usually not paid for her services.  As such, her two assistants, though eager to help, are usually looking for more lucrative employment.  Further, she drives a rickety vintage car and lives in a duplex next to her sister, Melanie (Caitlin Howden), and her family.  Susan goes home by herself, eats one of her many pre-cooked meals, and turns down Melanie’s invitations to spend time with her family.  The next day, Nick Evans (Damon Wayans Jr.) walks into her life.  That is not just cliché, by the way.  Literally, they awkwardly walk back to her office after getting coffee.  The reason for this appointment is because Nick is seeking to sue the eponymous dating website for false advertising.  Before Susan can say “frivolous lawsuit,” Nick goes on to explain that the company’s fine print stipulates that its customers will find love after 1,000 dates.  Nick is approaching this number and has yet to have anything past the initial encounter.  He has also kept notes on each one in order to keep them separate in his head.  While Susan tries to wrap her head around how somebody could go out with so many different women in a short period of time (breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as he says), he offers her firm a sizeable check to be on retainer.  This is eventually what convinces her to take the case, particularly since now she can pay her employees.  For the purpose of research, Susan begins interviewing some of the women who went out with Nick.  Surely this has been his sick attempt to find a loophole in a company’s fine print and profit off of the oversight?  While all the people Susan talks to have the quirks that Nick indicates, they also have nice things to say about him.  She also learns that it had been Jerome that had sent Nick her way, Nick being Jerome’s personal trainer as the older gentleman recovers from his injury.  To further test out what is the problem with the website, Susan’s assistants set up a dating profile for her.  She goes on two dates, though it would have been three but for one no-show, and each experience has its own strange flavor.  Basically, think of any stereotype you have heard about with online dating and that is what she has to endure.  In a matter of days, Nick is on the 1,000^th date (again, breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and Susan decides to attempt to sneak into the restaurant to make sure she is not being scammed.  She is spotted by one of the guys she had been matched with on the website.  Once her presence is revealed, she sits down and has dinner with Nick.  If you have not been able to guess by now, I hope by this point you can see where this is going.  Despite the obvious conflict of interest, Susan keeps finding reasons to spend more time with Nick, always giving the excuse that it is for the case.  In reality, she is beginning to fall for him.  This would be less of an issue had Nick agreed to settle for the smaller amount that Tamara Taylor (Heather Graham), pretentious chief executive officer (CEO) of the website, offered to drop the lawsuit.  Further, as the day in court gets closer, Tamara’s lawyer, Bill Jones (Jed Rees), phones Susan to give her client one last opportunity to take a deal.  He does so because he has pictures of Nick and Susan spending a lot of time together.  For Nick and Susan, because each of them has a profile, if they fall in love it means their case would be thrown out of court.  Susan sees the potential problem and, with difficulty, tells Nick that they should not see each other until the day in court.  During the trial, everything is going swimmingly for the prosecution.  This includes the defense’s star witness, Nick’s ex-fiancée Arianna (Kandyse McClure), whom Bill is counting on to corroborate their story that Nick is only in this for the money.  Instead, Susan calls her first and Arianna, like the others, testifies to Nick’s good character.  Thus, when Nick takes the stand, instead of speaking to what he had been trying to accomplish, he goes on the record saying that he is in love with Susan.  This means that there is no more lawsuit.  However, impressed by what he had done, Tamara offers to pay his legal fees and make a sizable donation to the hospital at which he volunteers in exchange for Nick and Susan being the new face of the website.  They agree to do so, with a little negotiation, and presumably live happily ever after.

As soon as we see Nick meet Susan in Love, Guaranteed, it is evident that they are going to end up together.  That is how these kinds of movies work.  It also spends a lot of time trying to prove a point that might seem equally obvious, that you cannot guarantee love.  Every time they went down this supposed logic path, I all but said aloud to my empty living room that love is only guaranteed in God.  With what I discussed in the introduction, this, too, should be evident.  It is the kind of thing that non-believers like to latch on to when they think about God, if they do, and that is okay.  It is more than this because Faith truly does serve a purpose, but it is better than nothing, I guess.  What I would like talk more about, though, is a brief moment in the court that I might not have given any thought to without this specific context.  With Nick on the stand, being under oath, he realizes that he cannot go through with the charade any longer.  To say that he is not in love with Susan to win a court case would have been a lie.  What struck me is that he specifically referenced the fact that he had sworn to tell the truth.  As many courtrooms still do to this day, this vow is taken with a hand on the Bible.  Honesty is closely related to love, and there is nothing more honest than God.  You can think otherwise all you like, but you will be in for a surprise when you die.  Though God is not mentioned in this sequence, it is still refreshing to see this taken seriously.

Love, Guaranteed was another selection from Netflix’s “Feel Good Movies” section.  The two selections I have made from this category at least accomplished the stated goal.  Hence, I think I will be spending a little more time in this area.  It does appear that these films are just romantic comedies in a different column.  I am fine with it, as I am with this movie.