God of Love (2010)
8/10
A triumph, very smart, very funny
31 July 2015
Warning: Spoilers
"God of Love" is an English-language short film from 5 years ago. It runs for almost 20 minutes, is black-and-white and I applaud Luke Matheny for what he did here in terms of writing, directing and acting. I do not often completely agree with the Academy, but I believe they got it right when they handed him the Live Action Short Film Oscar. Hilarious acceptance speech by the way. Check it out. Matheny has great recognition value due to his physical appearance and that elevated the film as well. I am really glad to see his recent success with the television show "Maron". I have not seen it (yet), but it sounds a bit like "Louie" to me. I hope Matheny can step into full feature films at some point too. I would certainly watch it.

Now, about "God of Love": First of all, do not be misguided by the pretentious-sounding title. This film is everything but pretentious. It's simple, funny (very tongue-in-cheek) and creative and the title reference comes from the very last quote of the main character and it's not really meant seriously. Also the choir at the end is really just for comedic purposes. The story is as simply as effective. A guy (Matheny) loves a girl. She, however, loves his best friend. And his best friend won't date her because it would be wrong to hurt his friend like that. Quite a mess. Then, Matheny's character one day finds a dart with which he can get people to fall in love with each other, sadly only for 6 hours. After that, the two have to have made a real connection so that the love stays, even if the effect from the dart wears off. He tries it on a friend and it works. The two stay together. Sadly, things do not go that well with himself and the girl of his dreams. So what should he do? There were a handful hilarious references and scenes in here, like the diabetes part or the scene where all the girls are following our hero. I very much enjoyed watching these 19 minutes. Give it a chance, you will not regret it. One last thing I forgot, there is also nice singing in here.
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