Who You Know aka All About Who You Know (2019)

(On Cable TV, April 2021) I’m an enthusiastic and forgiving audience when it comes to movies about writers, but—wow—was that stance stress-tested while viewing Who You Know, a film which attempts to be a showy self-aware take on screenwriting romantic clichés by featuring a protagonist who’s himself a smarmy smarter-than-thou screenwriter. Production values are toward the low end, even though the cinematography is usually decent and the directing is better than the writing. But this is a film that lives and more frequently dies by its script. Dialogue-heavy to an unusual extent, it describes the romance between a young screenwriter and the daughter of an Oscar-winning filmmaking legend: he initially wants to date her in order to get closer to her dad and use his influence to further his career but (stop me if you’ve heard this before — oh, right). Obviously, a screenwriter arranging for romance will be acutely aware of genre clichés and do whatever he can to not fall into them. Now, as someone who was (and still is, less frequently) that kind of smarmy smarter-than-thou person, it pains me to say that the protagonist is completely insufferable. Intolerable. Even worse given the miscasting of baby-faced high-schooler Dylan Everett in the role. For a film entirely focused on the character, that’s a major problem. No amount of bon mots can compensate for the charisma void at the core of the film, even though Niamh Wilson escapes unscathed through a much better portrayal of the female lead. But it’s not solely a matter of a bad protagonist: Who You Know is constantly, exhaustingly tugging at your sleeve, asking if you recognize how clever and smart and unique it is. Having been that person, I can tell you that the only way to deal with such a situation is to pat them on the back and tell them that they’re the cleverest, smartest and uniquest. So: Well done, writer/director Jake Horowitz, you are the cleverest, smartest and uniquest. Of course, you will deny viewers the closure of a happy ending — after all, that would not be clever, smart or unique. Of course, you’ll throw in the cleverest, smartest and uniquest dialogue you can find. Except by the time the female lead (who, not to put it subtly, is far more likable than the male lead) explains she’s been on to his entire scheme, we don’t care. By the time they break up, we not only agree, but wish he’d die in a freak self-immolation incident. By the time the picture wraps up, we’re just relieved. I usually want to be positive and enthusiastic about low-budget Canadian movies that rely on strong writing, but I’m going to make an exception for Who You Know.