Review of Rye Lane

Rye Lane (2023)
6/10
Rye Lane
28 March 2023
"Dom" (a charmingly friendly effort from David Jonsson) is having a bad day. He's been dumped by his long-term girlfriend and is having a bit of a cry in the unisex toilets at the art exhibition of his extrovert friend "Nathan" (Simon Mayonda). Meantime, "Yas" (Vivian Oparah) overhears his distress and noticing his pink converse trainers (yes, she looks under the door) bumps into him later and they strike up a conversation. This leads to a day together in which they find out about each other, meet their exes (a perfectly played luncheon with "Tinder" as the star); their exes families and they even indulge in a bit of benign breaking and entering. This shows cosmopolitan London at it's best. It's inclusive, inter-racial and makes no fuss about being so. As someone who lived in that city for thirty years, I rather liked the low key manner in which a diverse and vibrant London was presented here by Raine Allen-Miller. The rest of the story is, though, about as lightweight as it's possible to get. I found the "Yas" character irritating from the get-go, and though there are one or two fun cameo performances - an unique rendition of Terence Trent D'Arby's "Sign My Name" at a barbecue and Omari Douglas is quite good fun as the karaoke controlling "Mona". It all comes across as fine but unremarkable. It's good that it got a cinema release, but it didn't need it. On the telly is fine for this eighty minuter that you cannot dislike, but I very much doubt you will remember for long either.
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