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Isn’t She Lovely. Every time I think of the title, the song of the same name plays in my head! This pays homage to every single romantic comedy you have ever seen and or will see. What’s cute is how the characters both incorporate what they do know of that story type into what they’re doing WHILE simultaneously partaking in their own romance (intentionally at first, and then later…not.)

But more than the initially manufactured romance, there’s how things progress for them. Particularly, how they’re aware of things shifting for themselves but unsure about how things are going for the other. Things go from ‘Meet-Cute‘ to ‘I Love Him/Her… Maybe?’ That insecurity is what took the “manufactured” out of the mix, making the connection between the two all the more entertaining to witness. And sure, it’s unbelievable the things that they got themselves into, but still this does prove that the extent to which one is able to suspend disbelief is directly related to how entertaining things become. Because I didn’t quite believe all of it, but bought was rooting for them.

So what I liked:

>That awareness on both their parts that they’re playing at something.

>That despite said awareness, a shift to the real

>The family and how non-drama things could be

>In fact, that may be the best thing in this one: the over-all non-drama-ness of things.

>Well, that and all nods to ROM COM made time and again:

So let’s start with a Boy Meets Girl by way of the Meet-Cute via a Crash Into… Hello. Then them Literally Loving the Neighbor plus all those excruciating complications of the She’s Not My Girlfriend. Then questions of Will They or Won’t They (that’s still got me grinning) because there’s one, their False Start. Two, the Held Gaze and their Almost Kiss. And three, (oh three!) the Convenient Slow Dance as well as the whole She Cleans Up Nicely.

All the while we’ve Sexual Tension up the wazoo going from Unresolved to Belligerent. Eventually, there’s how Nothing Is the Same Anymore mixed in with all those Aborted Declarations of Love, first, with his Green Eyed- Epiphany then second, with her Maybe Ever After/ Maybe Never. Things pick up again with their Relationship Upgrade, not a Falling In Love for Cripes sake, but a starting toward it, with the First Kiss of Slap-Slap- Kiss variety (verbal slap-slap, of course) plus the I Got you a Drawer combo.

But the Complications! Of which there are many, mainly lots of the That Didn’t Happen’s. And then Boy Loses Girl (or could that be the other way around?) given all those questions Was It a Lie? But then yes, the Boy Finds Girl Again. Layne’s play on Closed Door Rapport, and predictably The Grovel/ Anguished Declaration of Love, by the way? So. Effing. Cute. Hint: it involves LEATHER PANTS. So, Exit Point? Well, sure, but only after That Big Damned Kiss and the I Uh You Too… only they don’t say “Uh.”

I really enjoyed this one.