Courtesy of twentieth Century Studios/Hulu
Desperately attempting to be “The Social Community” however for the rise of Tinder and Bumble, “Swiped” affords a surface-level story that exhibits little curiosity in truly exploring the revolution of on-line courtship. Lily James stars as self-made billionaire Whitney Wolfe Herd launched—as all protagonists on this style are—as a scrappy, formidable entrepreneur decided to make her mark on the world.
The pitfalls of on-line courting are well-documented: the tradition of harassment, unsolicited advances, and the flood of lewd photographs that turned once-hopeful areas into minefields. But “Swiped” treats these struggles in broad strokes, preferring what usually feels just like the Hallmark model of a Silicon Valley origin story. Director Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s intentions appear real, and James does her finest to anchor the movie, however the narrative badly wants urgency and sharper questions. Too usually it cruises previous milestones or skips over Wolfe Herd’s personal flawed practices. The place “The Social Community” interrogated society’s uneasy relationship with social media and wasn’t afraid to painting Mark Zuckerberg in an unflattering mild, “Swiped” appears unwilling to carry its topic accountable.
The movie traces Wolfe Herd’s climb via the male-dominated tech meals chain, ultimately resulting in Bumble after her public fallout with Tinder’s co-creators. The app’s mission, designing a platform that made courting not solely higher for girls, however safer, was noble and well timed, notably within the post-#MeToo period. However the movie solely gestures towards these concepts. It waits till the closing stretch to spark a dialog about security, harassment, and gendered energy dynamics, solely to resolve it in minutes. The outcome seems like an afterthought somewhat than the purpose.
On-line courting itself is an enchanting paradox the movie barely touches. Apps like Tinder and Bumble have broadened the courting pool, giving individuals entry to matches they’d by no means meet in any other case. They will empower customers, particularly ladies, with extra company over who initiates contact. However they’ve additionally commodified intimacy, decreasing potential companions to swipeable commodities, and have been linked to elevated loneliness and burnout. A movie that significantly examined that double-edged sword may have been revelatory.
Earlier this yr, Celine Tune’s “Materialist” captured the trendy doldrums of Twenty first-century romance with extra thought, honesty, and precision. You possibly can think about a model of “Swiped” that sought an analogous fact: asking why individuals crave connection on-line, how that pursuit can turn out to be superficial with out even realizing it, and the way a “female-friendly” model of tech would possibly nonetheless replicate the very issues it claims to unravel. As a substitute, by refusing to complicate Wolfe Herd’s picture or confront the darker contradictions of courting apps, “Swiped” finally ends up feeling toothless.
Don’t swipe proper on this one.
SWIPED streams on Hulu Friday, September nineteenth.