Look Both Ways Review: Netflix’s Multiverse Fantasy Has A Confusing Message

Last but not least, the new Netflix production Look both ways give the Groundhog Day Formula a much needed break. For a while, a marmot-like time warp scenario was the vehicle of choice to infuse stories about choices, destinies and relationships with a light sense of the fantastic. There seemed to be at least one time warp movie for every streaming service: PalmSprings, The map of small perfect things, boss level, Nakedetc. Look both ways instead borrowings from the 1987s blind coincidence, a Krzysztof Kieślowski film in which a young man who catches or misses a train creates parallel timelines with very different lives. (It was reimagined in America as a 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle sliding doors.) The branching event for Look both ways however, isn’t a train: It’s the result of a senior-season connection between college friends Natalie (Lili Reinhart) and Gabe (Danny Ramirez).

When Natalie gets sick on graduation night, she takes a pregnancy test. One timeline deals with a false alarm, and she proceeds with her “five-year plan,” which includes moving to Los Angeles with her best friend Cara (Aisha Dee) and pursuing her dream of becoming a professional animator. In the other, Natalie is pregnant and moving to Texas to live with her parents (Andrea Savage and Luke Wilson) and plunges into co-parenting with a nearby (but not exactly romantically involved) gift.

Like other “what if this happened differently” thought experiment films, Look both ways is an opportunity to explore the vagaries of life choices both big and small. But this film skims the surface of those choices, philosophizing with all the panache, power, and intelligence of a tacky rom-com. Or rather, two tasteless rom-coms: one features Natalie making a candid and charming “are they going to get together or not?” with Gabe, the drummer in a fun cover band. The other has drawn her to Jake (David Corenswet), a film pro from Los Angeles.

Photo: Felicia Graham/Netflix

Director Wanuri Kahiu brings a visual innovation to the two-track film formula, quickly merging the two timelines and accelerating the usual alternating-segment structure. Occasionally she superimposes images, creating a kind of temporal split screen. Increasing the frequency of jumps between timelines awards Look both ways a fast tempo and a bit of rhythmic unpredictability. The latter is sorely lacking in the film’s script.

Both storylines are mildly compelling in a soap opera sort of way, but the scenes in April Prosser’s script often feel more like reactions than dramatizations. An action happens, then the characters talk at length about how it made them feel. It’s narrative like a particularly superficial therapy session. At the center of all these solipsistic annoyances, Reinhart has trouble selling Natalie on both sides. Both the creative go-getter braving disappointment and the harried mother trying to retain the semblance of her old self have an overemphasized, glossy-plastic quality that even the expressive caricature of her work amidst the ridiculously heightened atmosphere from missing Riverdale

Even more troubling is the growing suspicion that the filmmakers think they’re tackling some difficult but understandable problems, like constructing those whimsically illustrated five-year plans that seem to exist mostly in films about people who plan too much. The film’s cuteness borders on insult as it stumbles into more difficult choices. Granted, it’s probably pointless to complain about movies that don’t fully consider abortion if pregnancy is meant to be the story’s engine. When a version of Natalie terminates her pregnancy, there is no obvious trigger for their different fates.

But it’s worth pointing out how weak-willed Look both ways is when it comes to explaining exactly why Natalie decides to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term at 22, seemingly committing herself against her own plans and desires of full-time motherhood. The film is too squeamish to let Natalie explicitly express pro-life beliefs or even mention the word “abortion.” Say what you want about movies like Juno misconstrued as anti-abortion—at least it has the courage to say the word out loud. At a time when abortion rights are actively being written into law, to claim that abortion is not even an option worth considering or even discussing seems to send exactly the wrong message at the moment.

Photo: Felicia Graham/Netflix

So Natalie shrugs through a life changing event and says things like “That was what was supposed to happen” so she can have some later scenes where she talks about being tired and worried or pays lip service to the joys parenting. And the film pays no attention to that parenting once it actually exists. Her child is treated as a plot device that is ultimately no more consequential than her choosing a particular job or roommate.

That, ultimately, may be the film’s odd, hollow point: Natalie is the same person in these two divergent multiverses, equally capable of walking different paths and overcoming different obstacles to achieve different forms of personal satisfaction. The darker side of movies like sliding doors or Melinda and Melinda is smoothed out to eliminate any sense of dichotomy between the two streets in front of Natalie. The resulting message, however, is superficial feel-good fluff: “Childless or young mum, couple or single, dream job or part-time job, all more or less interchangeable on this crazy journey we are on!”

Look both ways has nothing meaningful to say on any of the subjects it purports to address. Even when the filmmakers get little details right (Natalie’s animation references are spot on and very compelling), the film plays the supportive friend to its audience, patting viewers on the back and talking about how everything happens for a reason, and it will everything great. Then, a few minutes later, it comes back to the important part: talking endlessly about yourself.

Look both ways now streaming on Netflix.