ANSWERING THE CALL

With theatrical rom-coms nearly extinct, Netflix is finding success building the genre’s new home

- BY H. ALAN SCOTT

IT’S CERTAINLY NOT NEWS TO ANYBODY THAT THE STATE OF movie theaters is not great. To get people to go see a movie, any movie, is very difficult these days. In fact, so many of the recent big rom-coms to have come out lately have been on Netflix. Films like Always Be My Maybe, People We Meet on Vacation, Set It Up, Your Place or Mine and, most recently, Jennifer Lopez’s Office Romance have all been hits for the streaming giant. And now they’re adding another favorite to the queue, Voicemails for Isabelle, starring Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson.

Deutch plays Jill, mourning the loss of her sister, whose phone number gets transferred to Wes, played by Robinson. To cope, Jill leaves lengthy voicemails for her sister, leading to the most tech-friendly meet-cute in film history.