REVIEW: ‘In Love All Over Again’ Is One Of The Season’s Most Love-less

If you’re going to force me to spend nearly 6 hours watching a TV show, you really ought to make every episode worth something. In Love All Over Again isn’t worth any number of hours. This Spanish-language Netflix Original series has one interesting twist in its first episode and basically nothing going for it thereafter. Its characters are painfully disinteresting, it has too many plot threads all over the place, and its main character’s back and forth between two love interests could not be more dull.

It isn’t that In Love All Over Again does anything wrong. It’s entirely benign. It’s just an absolute bore. Its main characters are all film students. Irene (Georgina Amorós), the true main character, is attempting to direct a short film with her friends. She’s also in a long-term relationship with a boy from back home. But over the years, Julio (Franco Masini) interrupts their relationship again and again. Irene meets Julio at school and becomes immediately infatuated with him. While this all goes on in the early 2000s, the show is actually a frame story taking place in 2022. Every time we cut back to the frame, Irene and Julio are back in their will-they-won’t-they once again.

I hate the framing device. It’s confusing and it adds no irony or drama to the story. Instead, it just gives the show two concurrent plots that sort of play off each other. Ultimately, it could have just as easily been told in chronological order. It’s impressive, sometimes, how the characters look older and younger in the different time periods. But there are times when I just simply couldn’t remember what period we were in and had to rewind or just guess.

My real aggravation though is with the show’s complete lack of romantic motivation. I didn’t want a single one of these people to wind up happily together by the end. They weren’t annoying as individuals necessarily, but their relationships to each other were so empty. Whether because their romance wasn’t ever actually shown or because they were just too busy having sex to ever have a real conversation that wasn’t about work or their infatuation, there is nothing to latch onto and root for. I’d have been just as content if everyone went their separate ways and the ending was empty than if anybody got together.

The side plots don’t really do much of anything either. Infidelities, lying about how good each other is at acting or directing, getting stuck making projects that wouldn’t go anywhere as a result, or even finally getting to the brink of success. The show literally starts with a terrorist attack that dismembers its main character and basically forgets about it by the third episode. None of this felt the least bit interesting because it was always fleeting.

Because the show had 8 episodes to fulfill, none of the plotlines could really stick around too long without overstaying themselves, and the constant need to come up with the next crisis or the next time Irene and Julio would fight and break off or get back together was just tedious. Absolutely not worth trying to get through.

In Love All Over Again isn’t worth your time. It’s way too long, the characters aren’t interesting at all, and there is zero romance whatsoever. There are a load of other romances to watch on Netflix. Pick any of them.

In Love All Over Again is streaming now, exclusively on Netflix.