My Review of "Can You Keep a Secret"

Can You Keep a Secret is a movie that came out quietly in 2019. There was little buzz about this movie and I can kind of see why that was. It's a kind of a very by the books cliche romantic comedy. It's not one of the better ones but it does have some redeeming values.

This movie starts out with the main character Emma out in Chicago trying to promote her company's product. Her presentation is pretty disastrous and she's worried that she's going to get fired by the time she gets back home in New York.

As she's preparing to travel back to New York she's fortuitous enough to get bumped up to first class. There she partakes in unlimited alcoholic beverages. All of a sudden the plane experiences some pretty terrible turbulence causing many of the patrons to panic.

Fearing for her life she spills all the details of her life to a man sitting next to her. Apparently she just kept on going even when the turbulence was finished. She only finishes when she realizes that her and the man are the last people left on the plane as they had landed a while ago.

Mortified of the incident she quickly finds her boyfriend ready to pick her up and heads home. A lot of the secrets have to do with the fact she was very unsatisfied with her life. She's stuck in a relationship that she no longer wants to be in. Her work life isn't great because she doesn't feel appreciated, plus she doesn't like some of her co-workers.

When she fearfully comes back to work she finds out the mysterious co-founder of her company has finally returned. This newly discovered boss is Jack, the same man that she spilled her guts to on that fateful plane.

The whole movie kind of revolves around her falling in love with Jack. She feels free to talk to him about everything however he doesn't really tell her anything about him. So there's where the trouble comes later on in the movie.

So it's basically a girl meets boy, girl loses boy, boy makes a grand gesture and then girl eventually falls back in love with the boy that she lost. All romantic comedies kind of fall under this template. The main protagonist has an interest of someone they lose that person because of a misunderstanding. We usually wonder what this misunderstanding will be. Then that person will make some grand gesture to win back the protagonists' affection and it ends happily ever after. It's a tried and tested formula that usually works.

I'm sorry to say that this movie drags on. I don't know what it is about this movie because I do like the actors in this movie and they did a great job in their roles. Protagonist even have the obligatory kooky best friend or roommate. I think I may have been desensitized by this type of movie that I need a bigger twist or theme that really wows me. This movie kind of gets lost in the mix of romantic comedies. I don't think I'll really remember this movie after a while.

That's not to say it's a horrible movie. Well they did have some boring spots where I thought they were kind of laying it on heavy about how bad she doesn't like her life or how much she's really falling for Jack. I think they tried to keep the viewer's interest by trying to add some comedy but I didn't really find it that funny.

I can see what they're going for but the execution of the jokes weren't really that funny. It could be because a lot of the jokes have something to do with some of the characters being in awkward situations. The problem I found with those situations was that I didn't find them that awkward. They were situations that I could see actually happening in real life and I don't even bat an eye at that stuff anymore.

Overall, this is a competent movie but not really totally fun to watch. There were moments that I was tempted to shut it off and go to another movie but I felt that I had already invested too much time into it to quit. I have to give this movie a 5 out of 10. Once is good enough and I couldn't recommend this movie to anyone.