Netflix has a new #1 movie in its top 10 list, a romantic comedy that seems to have pleased both critics and audiences alike, far from a sure thing in that genre.
The film is Voicemails for Isabelle, which I thought was going to be based on a book from 2010 or so when people still left voicemails, but that’s not the case. Rather, Voicemails for Isabelle is written and directed by Leah McKendrick as an entirely original production. With so many adaptations of romantic novels hitting the screens, this is certainly unusual. And apparently welcome.
Voicemails for Isabelle stars Not Okay’s Zoey Deutch and Love, Simon’s Nick Robinson (McKendrick, also an actress, has a role as well). Deutch’s Jill leaves voicemails for her dead sister as a way of coping with the loss, but when the number is reassigned, connects with Robinson’s Austin who begins receiving the messages instead. Romance follows, naturally.
The film currently has a great 86% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and an even better 91% score from audiences, meaning it’s not just well-watched, it’s also well-liked. A comparison could be made to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, based on books by Jenny Han, which turned into a trilogy and even has a spinoff series that has run for three seasons, XO Kitty. The first film has a fantastic 96% from critics and an 84% from audiences, though the following two reviewed well below that, especially on the audience side (41% and 58%). It stands to reason that if Voicemails for Isabelle is a hit, maybe McKendrick could continue the story from there.
This definitely isn’t a high school romance, both Deutch and Robinson are 31, meaning this skews older. Interestingly, this is the second well-scored Zoey Deutch romantic comedy on Netflix, as she made Set It Up way back in 2018 with the not-yet-broken-out Glenn Powell, who didn’t really blow up as an A-lister until 2022’s Top Gun Maverick. Set It Up had a 92% audience score.
Romantic comedy fans are sometimes hard to please, though often that can be due to changes from the original books they don’t like. Here, however, there are no books, and this is one of the best Rotten Tomatoes audience scores we’ve seen in this genre on Netflix to date, though more reviews are still to come. It seems likely to stay on top of Netflix’s top 10 list for a while, given all this, unseating the much-different True Crime film, Maternal Instinct which has topped the list for a while now, and is now in second place. But Voicemails for Isabelle may be there for some time to come.
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