Netflix comes in heavy with the soap suds with the release of ‘What/If’ (2019), a soap opera style thriller starring Renee Zellweger, Jane Levy and Blake Jenner.
Zooming in on super cute but struggling couple Lisa (Levy) and Sean Donovan (Jenner) respectively trying to save the world through industry-disrupting biotech and assorted heroics as a paramedic, ‘What/If’ launches into its indecent proposal pretty quickly.
Zellweger’s Anne Montgomery, a frosty shark of a venture capitalist, proposes an 80 million dollar investment into Lisa’s flailing company for one night with her husband – the details of which cannot be exposed or the young scientist hands over the keys to her start-up castle.
As ‘What/If’ is clearly inspired by the great, convoluted, eye rolling soap opera plots of old, the lead and supporting cast’s backstories, motivations and allegiances are built on flashbacks and some serious melodrama.
Icy Montgomery ostensibly born of jackals is a victim of maternal abuse, Sean is kind of a murderer and Lisa’s adopted brother Marcos (Juan Castano) thinks he may be kind of one too.
It’s complicated.
You’ll realise this when Sean’s best friend Todd (Keith Powers) and his wife Angela (Samantha Marie Ware) find themselves battling the psychopath Angela was cheating on Todd with until she realised she wasn’t having his (the psychopath’s) baby.
Yes, you read that right, and ‘What/If’ is cringey from the beginning. But chances are you’ll hang on in the hope that it will get better mingled with your love of Zellweger who is either brilliant or woefully miscast.
Stream this if you’re suddenly intrigued, miss this because it’s officially television Mardi Gras. Welcome back, ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, ‘Big Little Lies’, ‘Good Girls’, ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ and ‘Black Mirror’.
‘What/If'(2019) is now streaming on Netflix.
– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com
