A smart meet-cute can be the making of a rom-com. Something memorable and quirky to endear the future couple to us and to emblazon them on the minds of one another so the will they/won’t they/do they/don’t they panto can begin.

Destination Wedding begins with a peculiar subversion of the trope – a meet-acutely awkward. Frank (Keanu Reeve) and Lindsay (Winona Ryder) form a bond of mutual dislike as they jostle for prime position in a non-existent queue at an airport gate. Quite why their dislike is so strong, and the character assassinations so intense from the outset, is unclear. It sets an unsettling and unrealistic tone which the film sadly never shakes.

Writer/director Victor Levin made the decision to have Lindsay and Frank meet as strangers and yet he appears to have failed to communicate this to his editor and cinematographer. Mat Maddox’s...