Film Review: LOVE HURTS (2025): Ke Huy Quan Stars in a Misfire that is Too Sloppy Even Though the Premise Had Potential
Love Hurts Review
Love Hurts (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Jonathan Eusebio, written by Matthew Murray, Josh Stoddard and Luke Passamore and starring Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Daniel Wu, Cam Gigandet, Marshawn Lynch, Andre Eriksen, Rhys Darby, Sean Astin, Drew Scott, Stephanie Sy, Adam Hurtig, Liam Stewart-Kanigan, Yoko Hamamura, Rawleigh Clements-Willis, David MacInnis and Phong Giang.
Ke Huy Quan emerged from his 1980’s successes (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Goonies) many years later and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Now, he’s been given a substantial leading role in director Jonathan Eusebio’s flat action-comedy, Love Hurts. While the movie’s shortcomings are in high doses, Quan has very little to do with why the film doesn’t work. He’s an asset although taking a role in a movie with a script as weak as this one could crash and burn his potential as a leading man for future projects. Quan is cast opposite Ariana DeBose, another Oscar winner, and it’s a mismatch despite the stars’ obvious talents.
Love Hurts opens with a Valentine’s Day party for which Quan’s character, Marvin Gable, has made heart-shaped cookies. Marvin loves his job as a realtor and there are small signs and billboards with his picture plastered on it all over town. Sometimes, these signs have a mustache drawn under Marvin’s nose. Marvin is a generally upbeat guy who is doing well for himself but that all comes crashing down when he encounters The Raven (Mustafa Shakir), a violent poet who ends up being knocked out. Marvin, it turns out, has a secret past where he was working as a crime-lord’s assistant or, perhaps, he was even an actual crime-lord leader. Leading the crime-ring now would be Marvin’s brother, Knuckles (Daniel Wu), who soon seeks out vengeance against Marvin. Knuckles thought Marvin was long-gone when he went into hiding years back.
There are other guys out to get Marvin too, including a man known as King, played by Marshawn Lynch of Bottoms fame. Early on, we get a violent fighting scene which could please fans of Everything Everywhere All at Once but the sequence is too brutal and over-the-top for its own good. Marvin tries to protect his recent salesperson award as he’s fighting a couple of goons. Marvin is thrown towards the floor and tossed while he’s in a refrigerator so he would have certainly been killed. This movie doesn’t ask the viewer to believe the story line, it just tosses inane action scenes out in high doses.
Ariana DeBose plays a mysterious woman named Rose Carlisle and it seems DeBose took the day off as she telephones her performance in playing a potential love interest for Quan’s Marvin. DeBose never seems like the right fit for the part. She’s charismatic in all the wrong ways for this movie. DeBose is a fine actress who is clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel by taking such an underwritten role.
Sean Astin serves as Marvin’s boss, Cliff, who meets an ugly fate after lending Marvin his car. Astin is also misplaced in this movie and there’s nothing positive about his few scenes in the picture. Lio Tipton plays Ashley, a woman who works for Marvin and ends up bonding with the wounded poet The Raven. Tipton is funny enough though there’s hardly any substance to her character.
Most of Love Hurts sets itself around Knuckles’s attempts to find Marvin. Rose and Marvin team up to try to evade Knuckles or defeat him. This is standard run-of-the-mill recycled material with a few light touches that could put a smile on viewers’ faces. That’s if the violence wasn’t so extreme. One can feel Marvin is in danger but things are way too intense here for a supposed comedy and that is the film’s biggest demerit.
Ke Huy Quan can’t be faulted too much. He won an Oscar a bit later in life considering he was a child actor and had to strike while the iron is hot if he wanted a leading role. It’s understandable. Unfortunately, this project is almost DOA with very little to keep it afloat.
There are the attempts by the funny Marshawn Lynch to liven the material up but his humor also seems out of place here which is disappointing. Yes, Love Hurts had potential but that potential gets squandered by the movie’s haphazard way of transitioning scenes. One could forget certain characters even exist so when the action cuts away from Quan and DeBose, the supporting stars seem like an after-thought due to the weak characterizations in the picture.
Love Hurts had a funny initial premise that’s good for a trailer but more was required for a successful movie. This film itself is positioning itself as a Valentine’s Day love story but there’s an age difference between Quan and DeBose which makes the romance feel unnecessary and flat. Ke Huy Quan is a great actor and hopefully another project that suits his talents will emerge sooner rather than later to make up for this mess.
Rating: 5/10
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