Blind date, anyone? You know what’s even more fun than a blind date? A wildly unsuccessful blind date. And you know what’s even more fun than that? Being sequestered with the person you’re not hitting it off with. How would you like a full week of house arrest with a blind date fail?
This one is about getting the story straight, because our heroes -essentially- lost the ability to behave as if lies don’t matter. Ravi (co-writer Karan Soni) and Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan) may not be right for one another, but sometimes love happens because you just give up and give in. Or at least I think that’s what this picture is trying to say.
These two really, really, really do not find the fun. Both are pushed together by Indian parents seeking grandchildren … but that’s about where the comparison ends. They don’t see eye-to-eye on vegetarianism, alcohol, pre-marital sex, and a host of other issues. Oh, and they’re both holding back lies; they’ve now exhausted the primary stuff they’re willing to lie about. “Well, hey, we weren’t meant for one another; tell our parents we tried and moved on. “
So … remember the first few months of 2020 … when COVID started being widespread and our idiot President did next-to-nothing to curtail it? [Don’t you DARE come back to me with “Travel Ban.” Trump acted 1) Late 2) As if the problem could be limited to one coast and 3) With racist intent. His delayed half-ass response was about 5% science. Considering what he knew or should-have-known, Trump’s non-actions resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths.] Sorry, where was I? Ah, yes, COVID. Remember COVID’s infancy in the United States and responsible people took it upon themselves to lock down? Well that’s the
plot here. Ravi can’t go anywhere … and he has no place to stay because he’s significantly far from home. Man, you went the extra mile for this blind date, huh?
Rita, of course, isn’t a jerk, so she offers a couch until Ravi can find a ticket out of town. I mean, how long could that take, right? It turns you can learn an awful lot about a person in a week … and you might even fall in love.
7 Days is contrived on both ends – the differences between these two aren’t superficial, but at first they seem to be looking for reasons not to gel … and after their initial dilemma of discomfort, however, they seem to fall a little too easily into compatible mode. Hmmm, the film made them both rift too forcefully and then connect too forcefully. So I guess that’s … fair? I dunno. I tell you this much – I like Geraldine Viswanathan; she is going to be a B-lister for a while, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were bigger things in her future. As for 7 Days – it’s a reasonable COVID film about people doing COVID things and having COVID issues during COVID. If you’re willing to roll with it, there are many worse films and most of them pretend COVID never happened.
Two kids who seem sort of sweet
Find their romance is missing a beat
Until hearts give way
In backward array
Perhaps they should have a “cute meet”
Not Rated, 86 Minutes
Director: Roshan Sethi
Writer: Roshan Sethi, Karan Soni
Genre: Love in the time of COVID
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Suckers for romance
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: COVID — COVID, my “friend,” you can make people lie, you can make people hate, you can make people evil, but you can’t stop every romance from happening, damn you
