Someone Like You: New Film Will Draw Christian Audience. Attention Lions

By Liz Braun

Rating: C

Someone Like You is a tale of romance and redemption in what is generally called the faith-based movie genre.

What exactly “faith-based” means at a time when Donald Trump’s latest grift is selling bibles remains murky, but it generally refers to a particular type of evangelical Christianity.

The movie is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Karen Kingsbury, whose 30-plus novels have sold more than 25 million copies. Kingsbury and her son, filmmaker Tyler Russell, co-wrote Someone Like You and Russell directed it.

Someone Like You is a boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-finds-lost-girl’s-hitherto-unacknowledged-sister-who-was-given-away-as-an-embryo-and-boy-gets-a-second-chance-at-love. All of this is revealed in the trailer, so these are not spoilers.

Canadian Sarah Fisher stars as London Quinn, and Jake Allyn is Dawson Gage. They are lifelong friends and now Dawson is in love with London. But it is not to be.

After London’s death — watch the trailer, people — Dawson is shocked to learn that his beloved was one of two embryos created through an in-vitro procedure; one embryo was donated to an infertile couple. That means London has a sister somewhere and Dawson intends to find her.

And he does. The sister, Andi Allen, is also played by Sarah Fisher. There is a bit of an emotional scuffle involved in all this because Andi has never been told that her parents are not her birth parents. Now Andi has some heavy lifting to do with regard to having two families, and she is confused and hurt.

Family, forgiveness, identity and the stirrings of a new love with Dawson — so much to process.

Dawson, meanwhile, finds himself falling in love with Andi, who is almost identical to London except for a superior religious faith and the wherewithal to look both ways before crossing the road.

Dawson also has much to process.

Someone Like You is essentially a 30-minute Hallmark-like film stretched into two hours of romance novel fluff via playful-lovebird music videos and other visual padding.

It is indescribably bad, and none of that matters. Just in time for Easter, the film will rise in 12 cities across Canada in umpteen theatres, coast to coast, and it will no doubt do boffo box-office wherever it plays.

Jesus can really put bums in seats.

Someone Like You. Directed by Tyler Russell. Starring Sarah Fisher and Jake Allyn. In theatres across Canada April 2.