{"id":627324,"date":"2026-09-25T18:24:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T18:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/627324\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T18:24:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T18:24:11","slug":"charlie-harper-review-emilia-jones-and-nick-robinsons-slow-breakup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/627324\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Charlie Harper’ Review: Emilia Jones and Nick Robinson’s Slow Breakup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe first thing to know about \u201cCharlie Harper<\/a>\u201d is that it\u2019s not, in fact, about someone called Charlie Harper. Charlie (Nick Robinson<\/a>) and Harper (Emilia Jones<\/a>) are a couple, meeting and parting at various stages across a five-year timeline; the title of this earnestly melancholy first feature by directing duo Mac Eldridge<\/a> and Tom Dean<\/a> implies that they\u2019re two halves of a shared soul, whether they\u2019re together or not. That\u2019s one romantic notion of many in a free-floating relationship drama, which employs an intuitively non-linear structure to enliven what is otherwise a fairly conventional, ordinary love story between two attractive but imperfect people. Robinson and Jones are a likable enough pairing to make \u201cCharlie Harper\u201d affecting here and there; making it interesting is a taller order.<\/p>\n

\n\tShortly after its premiere at last year\u2019s Toronto Film Festival, \u201cCharlie Harper\u201d was acquired for North America by then brand-new distributor Row K Entertainment; only now, over a year later, is it hitting theaters. That delay is sort of fitting for a story largely about the time it takes for life to fall into place, but the film itself doesn\u2019t inspire much urgency. Likelier to be found by audiences on VOD, it zigzags with some grace between the peaks and troughs of the romance at its center, but never gathers much momentum or even much depth of emotion; we surmise well before the end that our lovers probably aren\u2019t meant to be, and for that we may feel some wistful, knowing sadness. But our hearts don\u2019t break for them.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe begin, naturally, somewhere in the middle: Our introduction to the principals is not theirs to each other. When Charlie approaches Harper in a low-lit bar to introduce himself, she says they\u2019ve met before, jogging his memory about their first encounter way back in high school. But this is just another round of a game they\u2019ve played before, with the shoe on the other foot, and when we circle back to that same scene toward the close, we\u2019re more conscious of the weight of what has transpired between them. Starting over as strangers would be sweeter and easier. <\/p>\n

\n\tSoon after, but several years earlier, a mirror image of this scene sees Harper taunt Charlie with feigned unfamiliarity at a college party on the night of Barack Obama\u2019s first presidential victory: A shared backstory, more youthful still, emerges, as does a history of relationship-defining songs, exchanged on quaintly physical formats. (Their signature number is Brenda Lee\u2019s bittersweet \u201cBreak It to Me Gently\u201d \u2014 how happy can any romance be when it\u2019s founded on a ballad that heartsore?) He\u2019s a charismatic slacker, bright but aimless, and content to work menial jobs until, well, his discontent gets the better of him. She, by contrast, has a clear direction in life \u2014 from their small town to New Orleans, where she plans to train as a chef. (That makes \u201cCharlie Harper\u201d the second romance this year, after Netflix\u2019s \u201cVoicemails for Isabelle,\u201d to pair Robinson with a gourmet love interest. Not a bad type to have.)<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a time, they live together in shabby-chic Louisiana bliss, but the fault lines are easy to spot: Her ambitions curve ever farther away from his, and his growing drinking problem worsens matters. The film would have us believe that Charlie is a genius squandering his brilliance, though the script\u2019s rather tenuous demonstration of this is the fact that he associates madeleines with Proust; either way, the longer we spend bouncing around their relationship, the more we sense that the couple aren\u2019t especially compatible in their respective gifts, much less their failings.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCharlie Harper\u201d is constructed with care: Eldridge and Dean\u2019s direction can be nimble and imaginative, making up for shortfalls in the writing (by Dean alone). Sharone Meir\u2019s lensing deftly marks the various passages of the couple\u2019s story with clear shifts in palette and texture, from the flushed, saturated lighting of first love to the crisper, brighter clarity that comes with time and age and disappointment. Sam Levy\u2019s editing likewise darts associatively between these moods, seemingly letting sense memory shape the chronology of proceedings. But it can feel like quite a lot of formal business for a story this slight. As viewers navigate the film\u2019s loops and reversals, they may feel \u2014 rather like the embattled lovers working away at their relationship \u2014 that they\u2019re putting more into this thing than they\u2019re getting out of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first thing to know about \u201cCharlie Harper\u201d is that it\u2019s not, in fact, about someone called Charlie…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[283583,27132,146,85,46,283584,397,195271,283585],"class_list":["post-627324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-charlie-harper","tag-emilia-jones","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mac-eldridge","tag-movies","tag-nick-robinson","tag-tom-dean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}