It didn’t used to be this way, but thanks to the magic of streaming you can now pause anything at any time and pick up on fun little details. I don’t recommend you watch Prime Video’s “Relationship Goals” — at all — but if you do, I recommend you pause it towards the end. There’s a scene where Kelly Rowland, playing a TV executive with a long list of demands for her romantic partners, looks at a multi-page printout of her green flags. It’s full of unreasonable requirements, like having a 401K (in this economy), but also very reasonable demands, like well-groomed nose hair. Not “no” nose hair. Apparently she likes nose hair. She just needs it well-groomed. Fair enough.
In a halfway decent universe, this could have been the only interesting thing about “Relationship Goals,” a conventional, boring, forgettable romantic comedy if ever I’ve seen one. But we don’t live in a halfway decent universe. We live in one where this conventional, boring, forgettable romantic comedy isn’t even a romantic comedy. It’s a shameless promotion for a book about relationship advice, released on a streaming service that also happens to sell the book. It even features lines like, “This story hit so hard I Amazoned a copy of ‘Relationship Goals’ right away.”
If you haven’t heard of it, “Relationship Goals” is a book by Pastor Michael Todd which, if this movie is any indication, is full of mind-blowing romantic self-help tips like, if you’re not dating people you like, try dating different people, or maybe just try being single for a while. And hey, that’s not bad advice, it’s just really obvious advice. Then again it also compares people who date a lot, without a specific relationship goal, to chicken nuggets, because nobody wants to eat chicken nuggets if everyone’s touched them first. I’d like to think the book is more thoughtful and less condescending than that, but I remind you that this is a feature-length commercial for that book, and this is how they’re selling it. So maybe not?
“Relationship Goals” stars Kelly Rowland as Leah, a TV producer on a hit morning news show. She expects a big promotion after her boss retires but, surprise-surprise, the network wants her to compete with a new hire, Jarrett (Cliff “Method Man” Smith), who just happens to be the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her years ago. They’re assigned to work on a Valentine’s Day segment together — yes, together, as if that could possibly prove one is more qualified than the other — and it’s about the book “Relationship Goals,” which Jarrett says changed his life. Unlike Jarrett, Leah doesn’t want to make a puff piece commercial, which is the funniest thing about this “comedy” because that’s obviously all this is. All of it.
“Relationship Goals” runs through all the romantic comedy rhythms without ever settling on a beat. Rowland and Smith are likable performers but their banter is strained, and the film can’t settle on a structure that forces them to interact. Early in the movie they get trapped in Oklahoma, so they have to drive six hours to another airport to get back to the studio. You’d think that would be a decent framework for a rom-com. It’s familiar, but tried-and-true. Instead, we just get one brief interaction in a car, one forced gag about diner food and then they’re back home. The film set up a bit and then abandoned anything resembling a bit. Again, this is supposed to be a romantic comedy. We’re literally here for the bits. More bits, please. Why did you abandon the bits?
There’s a supporting cast in “Relationship Goals,” including a best friend who’s single and desperate (Annie Gonzalez) and another best friend who’s in a long-term relationship with no marriage prospects (Robin Thede). They exist to have problems that are easily solved by the book “Relationship Goals,” because the protagonists can’t get together until the end, and by itself that wouldn’t make it look like “Relationship Goals” has quick-fix solutions to all your romantic needs. And this movie really wants you to think it’s the perfect quick-fix.
But those characters also exist because “Relationship Goals” is following the template set forth by “Think Like a Man,” another rom-com based on and explicitly about a real-life romantic advice book. “Think Like a Man” was also a shameless commercial but it did, at least, try to be a very good commercial. “Think Like a Man” had a variety of romantic subplots that it sold with a great cast, solid dialogue and some cinematic oomph. “Relationship Goals” isn’t trying to convince us it’s a real film, it’s only doing the book commercial part. Which means it’s not even a good book commercial.
If you look back at Leah’s list of romantic requirements you’ll notice that one of them is “Enjoys film.” She tears these pages up, by the way, presumably because by that point Leah — and the movie itself — has long since given up on the concept of cinema. “Relationship Goals” isn’t as insulting as Prime Video’s “War of the Worlds,” in which the planet was literally saved by two Amazon purchases and the wonder of flying Amazon drones, but then very few films are, so that’s not a useful comparison. It’s enough that this film is insulting, unconvincing, unfunny, unromantic, and, worst of all, at least to the Amazon executives, it doesn’t even make you want to buy the damn book.
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