The Wrong Paris review Netflix Bachelor romcom makes few right choices

"The connections can be genuine, and the feelings often real, but the situations are contrived and manipulated, a pioneering brand of deliberately saccharine, hokey and ridiculous in the name of love and for the sake of entertainment. Watching The Bachelor and its spinoffs, as I occasionally have over its two-plus-decade run, is to be baffled, frustrated, annoyed and ultimately hooked."

"No such spell exists for The Wrong Paris, Netflix's latest attempt to build an in-house Hallmark Channel, in which Miranda Cosgrove plays a single woman who goes on a reality dating show for what Bachelor Nation would call the wrong reasons. No offense to the Hallmark Channel, which at its best can be laughably unserious fun. But The Wrong Paris, written by Nicole Henrich and directed by Janeen Damian, somehow serves the synthetic sugar of both The Bachelor and the Hallmark movie without any sweetness."

"The formula is there, but not the flavor, nor the drop of derangement like, say, a hot snowman brought to life required to beat the Netflix allegations of low-quality, lowest-common-denominator stuff. The setup, at least, is promising, like a fluffier and sillier UnReal. In an almost daringly utilitarian first scene, the stakes are set: Cosgrove's Dawn, a Girl With Tools in a Small Town With Dead Parents, achieves her dream of getting into art school in Paris."

The Wrong Paris attempts to blend reality-dating show tropes and Hallmark-style romcom conventions but lacks charm, sweetness, or the eccentricity that can elevate formulaic fare. Miranda Cosgrove plays Dawn, a resourceful small-town woman who paid her grandmother's healthcare costs and needs money for Paris art school tuition. A reality dating series offers a shortcut to the tuition, while her sister is an enthusiastic fan of the Honeypot. The film reproduces contrivances of shows like The Bachelor and leans on synthetic sentiment without the manic or deranged note that can make such hybrids entertaining. The setup shows promise but falls flat.

Read at www.theguardian.com