REVIEW: ‘Look Both Ways’ is One of the Summer’s Best Romances

Things in life rarely go as planned. And even when they do, we don’t always end up feeling the way we expected to when it happens. Directed Wanuri Kahiu and writer April Prosser drive this message home with exceptional creativity and satisfaction in the Netflix Original romance Look Both Ways. When Natalie (Lili Reinhart) thinks she may have accidentally gotten pregnant with her best friend Gabe (Danny Ramirez) just before graduating college, it puts both of their futures way up in the air. In one version of the story that follows, the pregnancy test comes back negative. In the other, it’s positive. Both stories play out simultaneously over the next several years as we see how their lives and their dreams unfold in either situation.

There are so many ways this story could have gone wrong. It could have pushed one story as the more right path than the other. It could have pushed a moral or political perspective about pregnancy or love or having a career. Instead, we just get two completely wholesome romance stories side by side that each exist purely for the sake of examining the age-old question “what if?”

On the surface, the question is pointed toward whether Natalie has a baby at 22 or not. But in both stories we see her grapple with what if she was a better friend, or what if she had certain relationships, or what if she made certain career choices? All of the paths her life takes have clear and complicated branching paths and none of the way things play out ever feel like imperatives, merely the way life happened to turn out. It’s deeply refreshing to watch a romance and feel like truly things can turn out to have any possible outcome.

And to boot, we get two stories going on at once. It’s quite impressive the way that the two sides of the story never feel confusing against one another or take too much of each other’s oxygen. While most of the movie puts the separate timelines into separate sequences, there are a few scenes that blend the two together and show the diverging paths on screen at the same time. Each one of those moments is both visually and emotionally satisfying. And getting to see more than one iteration of a love story with the same character at the middle is truly a treat.

Reinhart plays this rather impressively too. While her personality is largely the same across both iterations of her character, there are subtle differences in the way she carries herself as well as just dramatically different emotional states she finds herself in on either side. The range Reinhart displays in showing off each of these expressions is quite strong. Ramirez as well as David Corenswet‘s Jake, Aisha Dee‘s Cara, and Natalie’s parents played by Andrea Savage and Luke Wilson help to round out the movie’s cast with plenty of humor and charm.

Look Both Ways is a very creative and totally satisfying double dose of romance that shows better than most that life doesn’t always turn out how you expect it to and that’s okay. Its split stories are woven together flawlessly, leaving it one of the summer’s best romances.

Look Both Ways is streaming now on Netflix.