‘Sweethearts’ Review: Generic College Comedy Offers Too Little to Be Thankful For

There are already multiple movies about that first, chaotic weekend when college freshmen return home. And the standards aren’t especially high; the genre includes the Pauly Shore comedy “Son-in-Law” and the Hallmark-ian romance “Turkey Drop.” But “Sweethearts,” a sex comedy lacking in sex, silliness or subversion — just one would do — barely clears the bar.

Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga (“Moxie”) are Jamie and Ben, platonic besties who head off to college together. They’ve committed to long-distance relationships with their high school sweethearts, but soon realize they’d rather be single. So, like millions of students before them, they decide to break up with their partners during Thanksgiving weekend.

After a few listless mishaps, they return home to Ohio where the unsuspecting Claire (Ava DeMary) and Simon (Charlie Hall) await. Jamie is convinced the break has to happen immediately, so they enlist their other BFF, Palmer (Caleb Hearon), to help organize the night. He’s supposed to bring Claire and Simon to his house, where Ben and Jamie will simultaneously pull the trigger. The plan, of course, goes immediately awry.

After run-ins with hundreds of former classmates, two glasses of absinthe, and one angry bouncer, the foursome finally meet up. And the only surprise we encounter is that director Jordan Weiss and her co-writer Dan Brier were brave enough to include scenes from “When Harry Met Sally,” the romantic comedy you should be watching Thanksgiving weekend.

When Shipka and Hiraga are allowed to breathe, we can see glimmers of the story’s modest, but potentially appealing, pitch. So the most generous assumption is that the film was watered down by too many studio notes, pushing for ever-broader scenarios and increasingly dense characters. The jokes appear to be written for minor shock value rather than comedic impact, but half of them don’t even have punchlines. (Sample laugh: “You going home for Thanksgiving break?” “Nah. My mom’s a bitch.”)

Similarly, the casting seems to have been designed primarily via algorithm. Most of the supporting cast playing teens — including Sophie Zucker, Zach Zucker and Jake Bongiovi — are clearly years older than their characters, or only onscreen long enough to provide the film with an extra PR hook.

All a holiday movie really needs is a single element that’s sincere enough to keep us engaged. “Sweethearts,” though, feels like it was made by parents trying desperately to be cool around their newly sophisticated kids. Those kids — or their slightly-younger siblings — are clearly the target audience. But hopefully most of them will be too busy with real plans to bother living vicariously through such a cautiously constructed simulation of adolescence.

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