Set It Up

Set It Up (2018) is about two assistants trying to make their bosses fall in love. Harper and Charlie work in the same building and both are still serving their bosses at midnight. They meet in a lift one evening and make a plan: if they can get the two together, both will be occupied and the assistants will get their lives back. They send fake messages, arrange coincidences, book the same restaurant. The plan works. The trouble is that in building it together they get to know each other. The best thing about it is that it sees the class difference. The bosses are wealthy and know what they want; the assistants are in debt, short of sleep, and unclear whose life they are living. Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell star. Powell was not yet known at the time. Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs play the bosses. It was made by Netflix and is counted among the films that revived romantic comedy on streaming, at a point when the genre had almost vanished from cinemas. There is a scene about pizza that is the most discussed moment in it; it establishes the entire relationship through one order. The script never steps outside the genre and does not feel the need to. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: romantic comedy, office humour, and undemanding viewing. Less good for: the story is entirely predictable and the last section is too faithful to formula.