Where to Stream: Catching Feelings

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Catching Feelings, Netflix’s latest feature-film romantic comedy, stands apart from its other recent offerings, and not just because it sets its rom-com among a set of academics in contemporary Johannesburg. It’s a sexy premise, even among the bookish college-professor set, and one that stands out among more traditional films in its genre.

CATCHING FEELINGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Max (Kagiso Lediga) is a writer and college professor living with his wife, Sam (Pearl Thusi), having dinner with their academic friends and Max, at least, feelings insecure and neurotic that he’s not some famous writer. And as if he didn’t have enough to feel insecure and neurotic about, into Max’s orbit comes this hedonistic old famous writer named Heiner. With a long and sketchy history of being a famous guy who gets ass for that reason alone, Heiner is kind of a menace, if only towards Max’s psyche. At first, Max starts hanging around with him, doing coke and making out with students of his who he has no business with. When Heiner suffers a health scare (popping Viagara and trying to screw two young women will do that), Max and Sam invite him to stay with them, which ends up being a huge mistake in quite a few ways.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The hedonistic machinations of academics and their self-destructive tendencies could have you thinking about movies like the excellent Curtis Hanson/Michael Douglas movie Wonder Boys and the more recent Amazon TV series I Love Dick. Catching Feelings doesn’t catch those heights, but aiming for excellence never hurt anyone.

Performance Worth Watching: Kagiso Lediga is a talented comedian, and his ability to be effortlessly funny in all types of scenes comes shining through. But special attention should be paid to Andrew Buckland, who plays such a potentially infuriating character like Heiner is, with his groupies and Viagara and giant ego. But Buckland’s performance is funny and grounded and strangely likeable.

Memorable Dialogue: Lediga is a very funny writer, and a lot of the sidetrack scenes in this movie feature some funny observational moments between friends. It makes the memorable dialogue hard to narrow down, though.

Max, after he’s driven one of his white friends away after being salty about him adopting a black child: “I’m just looking out for all those impoverished white babies that always get overlooked by the billionaire celebrities going for babies from other races and cultures.”

Heiner after surviving his sexual misadventure: “You have one isolated case of Viagara-induced cardiac arrest and they want to put you in an old age home”

Max, lamenting inviting the horndog Heiner to stay with him and his wife: “What the hell was I thinking, bringing a guy like that into my house? It’s like bring a wolf into … into my house.”

Watching Max flirt with disaster as a student flatters him and makes eyes with him is only enhanced by the fire-safety sign and fire extinguisher behind them. Nice bit of commentary there.

Sex and Skin: The aforementioned Viagara heart attach that fells Heiner early on is a moment, especially with the girls he was having sex with covering up their parts while they call for help. And later, when Max has to be out of town, his imagination tortures him with visions of Sam and Heiner having sex … or is it what’s really happening? We’ll never know, and the point is that Max (and the audience) has to trust Sam at her word, or else learn to live with the uncertainty.

Our Take: The usual romantic-comedy frustrations where smart characters act stupid so that we have a movie to watch are at play here, but this is a likeable movie with some funny performers. Lediga also loads up his film with a lot of ancillary themes about life in South Africa and white colonization mentality. Nothing too heavy, just a smart layer of subtext.

Our Call: Stream It. It’s a light little escape from a fresh comedic voice.

Stream Catching Feelings on Netflix