Five Blind Dates is a romantic comedy-drama film released on Prime Video on February 13, 2024. It is directed by Shawn Seet and is co-created and co-written Shuang Hu and Nathan Ramos-Park.
In the film, traditional tea shop owner Lia gets an unwelcome prophecy during her visit to her family in Townsville for her sister’s engagement. Her family sets her up on five blind dates to help her find a suitor who can bring her success.
The cast of the film includes Shuang Hu as Lia Ling, Yoson An as Richard, Jon Prasida as Ezra, Desmond Chiam as Apollo Wang, Ilai Swindells as Mason, Tiffany Wong as Alice, Renee Lim as Jing, Rob Collins as Curtis, Scott Lee as Nigel and Tzi Ma as Xian.
Five Blind Dates Review
Lia is an artisanal tea shop owner which came into being from the money that her grandmother aka Popo left in her name. Being very close to Popo and their tradition of having tea ceremonies, Lia opens up the show in her honour and as a way to make a living in Sydney, away from her family in Townsville. However, things aren’t going the way she had intended. There are hardly any customers and even those who come are looking for boba tea, which has become a bane of Lia’s career.
On the occasion of her younger sister’s engagement, she drags herself to her hometown with her gay best friend & business partner Mason. Pretending to be a success in front of her family, she gets her fortune read and is gifted with a prophecy – the fate of her shop/career and her love life are intertwined, and the secret lies in one of her next five dates. But it has to be before the wedding of her sister, which is in less than two months.
Under pressure from her family, and with a little hope of attracting abundance, Lia agrees to be set up with five different suitors selected by others. On the other hand, there’s Richard – her ex-best friend and boyfriend who broke her heart. Despite years of estrangement, both seem to be equally interested in each other but deterred by their history. With love and career going into a downfall at the same time, Lia tries her best to find a bit of luck before she has to pack her bags back to where she ran away from.
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Five Blind Dates is like any other rom-com film about a stuck-up career-driven girl finding her roots and realising that everything isn’t as awful as she believed. And just make everything Asian, with typical controlling parents, younger & better sibling and distorted views of love. Having seen such scenarios a hundred times at least, it’s quite predictable what’s about to happen. But the issue is that predictable stories often work if there’s humour and substance, which is nowhere to be seen here.
The only factor that keeps us watching is the mystery behind the five dates – who would they be and if she will find a good suitor. Lia as a character is dull and obnoxiously boring. It’s great that she is passionate about teaching people about traditional tea ceremonies etc, but her frustration of getting no customers gets the best of her. Instead of finding ways to make her business work, it seems to look like propaganda against boba tea. She has no personality and so does the performance by Shuang Hu looks lacking. Even when her ‘gay best friend’ or ‘side-kick-for-fruity-humour’ tries to give a makeover, it does nothing to the hollow character.
Also, what’s the requisite of having a gay male best friend in a rom-com? Earlier it used to be ‘a female black friend’ who would pop in for a joke or two but now they have to be homosexual as well, for some more quirks. And it’s not a bad thing if it works ie entertains, but here it’s just forced and not funny at all. Similarly, even when other characters aren’t exactly typical, their deviation doesn’t add any humour. If we keep these cliches aside and focus on the topic – Five blind dates and how they change her life. Even that turns out to be disappointing.
In fact, the whole premise begins to look meaningless *spoiler alert* when it does nothing for her life or career. Five Blind Dates is a kind of film that you would watch when you don’t feel like watching any of the classic rom-coms yet end up watching something similar and regret it. Eventually, you tune into your comfort watch.
Rating: 1.5/5
Five Blind Dates is available for streaming on Prime Video.
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