Film Review: WISH YOU WERE HERE (2025): Isabelle Fuhrman Returns to the Screen in Julia Stiles’s Adequate Though Manipulative Tearjerker

Wish You Were Here Review

Wish You Were Here (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Julia Stiles, written by Renée Carlino and Julia Stiles and starring Isabelle Fuhrman, Mena Massoud, Gabby Kono-Abdy, Jimmie Fails, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Grey, Josh Caras, Mike Carlsen, Jordan Gavaris, Beatriz Oruna, Sherman Roberts, Barbara Ryan, Antonique Smith and Jane Stiles.

Ethan Hawke’s Hamlet‘s Ophelia actress Julia Stiles takes a chance behind the camera with her mushy cinematic directorial debut, Wish You Were Here. This new three-hankie picture is almost salvaged by a remarkable leading turn by the always intriguing Isabelle Fuhrman who wowed audiences pretending to be a kid in Orphan and won an award for playing a queer rower in the Tribeca Festival favorite, The Novice. Stiles’s picture starts off strong with an unpredictable series of scenes that would have been better served if they were followed by a different turn of events. Fuhrman nevertheless creates interest in her leading character, a struggling waitress named Charlotte.

Fuhrman’s roommate is terrifically portrayed by Gabby Kono-Abdy. One night, they meet a mysterious stranger (Mena Massoud) who ends up connecting with Charlotte when he offers to give her some of his take-out food. This film then turns into a love story where this new guy in Charlotte’s life, an artist, starts to bond with Charlotte when they go to his apartment. Both Massoud and Fuhrman create an idealized situation believably as these two characters get to know each other by inventing stories to make them feel better about their lives. When he changes his tune the next morning, Charlotte leaves his apartment and tries to move on. She believed that they had a genuine romantic connection, but did they? He doesn’t come around again which suggests he may be ignoring his connection with her for some odd reason.

There is a major plot twist after Charlotte is ghosted and it’s a doozy. I’m not compelled to give away the secret of the story though it has been revealed all over the internet because if people knew it, they wouldn’t want to go see the movie. This film’s premise is so old school that it dates back to a Julia Roberts movie called Dying Young from the early 1990’s and that’s just in terms of the movies I’ve been around to see come out. Fuhrman is so good in Wish You Were Here that I would like her fans to see her work, so I’ll say no more about the specifics of the way the plot unfolds.

Another guy tries to date Charlotte in the interim. He’s played by Jimmie Fails who the plot does a great injustice to as a character. Fails succeeds in his role several times over as the more likable of the two men Charlotte dates. However, Charlotte is a more complex character who faces suffering head-on in this movie. Though Fuhrman and Fails have minimal chemistry together, they’re immensely likable thanks to the charisma found in both of their performances.

Kono-Abdy is also easy to relate to as her advice-giving character soon finds herself dating a new guy and leaving the apartment she shares with Charlotte which is soon occupied by the under-written character of Charlotte’s brother. Kono-Abdy and Fuhrman accurately play best friends as the two characters go through a series of emotional conversations as Charlotte deals with the unfortunate turmoil that she finds herself facing in the story line.

Jennifer Grey and Kelsey Grammer are on-board as Charlotte’s parents. Grey gets to have fun in a scene or two as she does her hair up at one-point with Charlotte’s help, but Grammer only appears a few times throughout the movie suggesting his screen time was most likely left on the cutting room floor.

This is Isabelle Fuhrman’s movie through and through. She delivers the correct emotions in every close-up and every sobbing scene she appears in. She’s in mostly the entire movie and carries it along through some slumps. Mena Massoud is especially good in the scenes prior to the moments where the two leads find themselves making love when they first get to know each other in Massoud’s character’s apartment. Massoud’s later scenes are OK but are bogged down by a lack of chemistry between the leads due to the dynamics of the plot which are rather depressing to endure.

Stiles shows great promise as a director, and Wish You Were Here is an adequate first movie that could lead to better future prospects. Stiles has some beautiful shots employed as the two leads sail on the water together in the new film and the realism of the movie is also captured well by the tone of the picture Stiles chooses to employ here. Stiles also uses a song from another similar love story, 2013’s The Spectacular Now, which could be a personal film favorite of Stiles’s considering the contrast between the two love stories. Fuhrman has worked extremely well with Stiles to make Charlotte an unforgettable character in a movie that is ultimately a series of unfortunate events for the viewer to behold. I was still moved emotionally by Fuhrman’s stunning performance, and on that basis, this may well be a film of interest to people who want to see a near-perfect turn in a mediocre film.

Rating: 6.5/10

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