Netflix’s ‘Voicemails For Isabelle’ movie made me believe in rom-coms again

All love to Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein, but I simply did not care about their relationship in Office Romance, a new Netflix romantic comedy that began streaming earlier this month. The jokes were sharp. The script was smart. The supporting cast was stacked. I laughed. I had fun. But when JLo and BGold kissed, I felt absolutely nothing. Maybe, I thought, I’m just not as into rom-coms as I thought I was. Maybe I’m not the romantic I used to be.

Then I watched Voicemails for Isabelle, another new Netflix romantic comedy that began streaming today. Like Office Romance, the jokes were sharp, the script was smart, and the supporting cast is stacked (Nick Offerman, Lukas Gage, Harry Shum Jr., to name a few). But when romantic leads Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson first met, my heart pounded. When they kissed, I kicked my feet in joy. When they fought, my stomach churned. And then I remembered: Oh, right. This is how you do a great romantic comedy. There is magic in this genre, when done right. And Voicemails For Isabelle made me believe in that magic again.

Written and directed by Leah McKendrick (M.F.A., Scrambled), Voicemails for Isabelle feels like it must be based on a book, given how full and realized the characters feel. In fact, it’s an original romantic comedy, first written on spec by McKendrick, bought by Sony back in 2019. The first twenty minutes of the film introduces us to Jill (Deutch), who lives her life as unseriously as she possibly can, all for the sake of coming home to her sister with a great story. Jill’s sister, Isabelle, has cystic fibrosis. She’s been in and out of hospitals her whole life. She never got to have a normal girlhood. Jill does her best to give it her vicariously, relaying every detail of her life to Jill over their constant phone calls and voicemails.

Jill moves from her hometown of Austin, Texas to San Francisco, to pursue her dream of becoming a chef. She still calls Isabelle every day—right up until Isabelle’s health takes a turn for the worse. Jill rushes home, but doesn’t make it in time. Isabelle is gone. A grieving Jill listens to her sisters voicemails every night, and continues to call Isabelle’s number, leaving new voicemails in return, regaling her dead sister with tales of her many failed dating escapades.

Back in Austin, a real estate agent named Wes (Robinson) gets a new cell phone for work. He starts receiving funny, if slightly unhinged, voicemails from some woman named Jill. While he knows he should let her know she has the wrong number, he starts to get caught up in the drama of Jill’s dating life. Eventually, he pieces together that Jill’s sister has died, and he’s been reassigned her old cell number. By this point, he’s so intrigued by Jill that he volunteers for a work trip to San Francisco, and orchestrates a meet cute out of Jill’s romantic fantasies—which Wes knows about, because she described it in one of her voicemails.

Jill and Wes click immediately. Granted, Wes has a leg-up, given how much he already knows about Jill. But their chemistry is palpable from the start, thanks in large part to Deutch and Robinson’s talent, and the easy way they play off of one another. Nothing feels forced. Nothing feels like work. (Deutch and Robinson no doubt both worked very hard on the film—but the audience can’t feel that, a mark of two great actors.) Watching Deutch and Robinson together is as natural as breathing. Immediately, I’m relaxed. I’m taken care of. These are pros, and it’s a joy to watch them fall in love on screen. And not for nothing, but when Robinson shoved Deutch up against some pans and kissed her senseless on the kitchen counter, it was hot.

Watching Goldstein and Lopez together on screen, I could feel them straining to make their chemistry work. I tried to convince myself to root for them as a couple, but eventually, I gave up. I just couldn’t force myself to feel invested in their love story. The few sex scenes—all cut off before anything steamy truly happens—were occasionally funny, and yet completely sexless. (Rumor has the stars were hooking up off screen during the shoot, but just because they have chemistry in real life doesn’t mean they have chemistry in front of the camera.)

Voicemails for Isabelle, on the other hand, had me hooked from the first minute. Watching the movie felt like an addicting compulsion, rather than a chore. McKendrick (who also appears in the film as an actor, as Wes’s friend Breeda) deserves a lot credit, for spending so much of Act 1 establishing Jill as a fully-realized character with a rich inner life. I was immediately rooting for Jill with my whole heart, the same way I root for Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, and other great romantic comedies.

And yes, maybe Voicemails for Isabelle is somewhat derivative of You’ve Got Mail (which gets a very funny shout-out in the Netflix film) and of the 2023 film Love Again, a Priyanka Chopra romance with a very similar concept. (To be fair, McKendrick sold her Voicemail script years before that film was released, in 2019!) But honestly? I don’t care. Yes, audiences know what to expect in a formulaic romantic comedy. That’s one of the reasons we love them. We just want to see that formula executed well.

When Nick Robinson ran to confess his love to a girl on New Years Eve, in the rain, with fireworks exploding behind him, maybe I should have rolled my eyes. Instead, I started crying. It was a moment that could have cheesy in less capable hands, but here, felt so incredibly earned. Voicemails for Isabelle leaned into every rom-com trope imaginable. And those tropes—when done well—create magic. Voicemails for Isabelle captured that magic, and reminded me that I love this genre. It reminded that I am, in fact—as Wes says—a believer.