{"id":14935,"date":"2026-08-26T16:20:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14935"},"modified":"2026-08-26T16:20:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T20:20:52","slug":"finding-emily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/08\/26\/finding-emily\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Emily"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Finding Emily<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sexual references, language, some crude material, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alicia MacDonald\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rachel Hirons\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Morgan Kibby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Rachel Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 28, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Sadie Soverall, Cora Kirk, Jack Riddiford, Isabella Laughland, Nadia Parkes, Minnie Driver, Timothy Innes, Anthony J. Abraham, Kat Ronney, Amber Grappy, Phil Wang, Fiona Allen, Clara Lioe, Yali Topol Margalith.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Romance in the social media age, it\u2019s complicated. A grand romantic gesture can be blown way out of proportion turning Lance Romance into a creepy stalker once everybody starts chiming in. I get it. There are a good many creeps out there; it pays to be cautious. At the same time, there are a few genuine romantics just looking to make a connection. I should know; I used to be one of them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now what happens when signals somehow get crossed? It gets the rom-com treatment, of course. That brings me to Finding Emily<\/strong>, a good-natured and surprisingly insightful piece about looking for love in a time when everybody and their sister feels compelled to make their views on whatever known to the whole world via social media platforms. It\u2019s in this world that we find Owen (Fearn, Alien: Romulus), a socially awkward sound engineer at a student union bar at fictional Manchester City University. One night, he meets this girl and immediately falls for her. They share a dance before she has to dash off to a party. Before she leaves, he gets her name \u201cEmily\u201d and phone number. In her haste, she missed a digit. Now he has no way of contacting her. Or does he?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Owen decides to look for Emily around the school. Somebody points him towards a girl named Emily Raine (Rice, Mean Girls), a third-year psychology student trying to finish her thesis. She has an interesting hypothesis. She believes love is a form of insanity and a vestigial evolutionary impulse. She hasn\u2019t had much luck in that department herself. She still hasn\u2019t gotten over a failed relationship with a fellow psych major a few years earlier. She, of course, is not the right Emily. Upon meeting Owen, she decides to make him her case study under the guise of helping him locate his Emily or, as she calls her, his \u201cactual manic pixie dream girl\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The aforementioned grand gesture is Owen sending anonymous e-mails to every Emily enrolled at the school. It quickly becomes controversial with one of the Emilys, an outspoken feminist (Ronney, Dinosaur), leading a movement to vilify \u201cEmail Guy\u201d. He becomes a media sensation when he appears on a podcast and performs a song he wrote about his Emily.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As Owen continues his quest and Emily R. works towards finishing her thesis, something completely expected happens. They start to develop feelings for each other. Now this could easily blow up when (there is no if) Owen finds out what Emily R. is really up to. It could also get complicated when (again, there is no if) the Emily he\u2019s been looking for finally surfaces. None of this should be a surprise if you know how rom-coms work.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Alicia MacDonald, making her feature film debut with Finding Emily<\/strong>, colors outside the lines of the genre by making an intelligent statement about modern social mores especially as they pertain to looking for love. We\u2019ve become an alarmist, hyper-alert society thanks to all the horror stories on social media about nightmare dates with people who turn out to be psychos. What\u2019s meant as a romantic gesture turns into a thing, especially when feminist Emily forms a lynch mob (comprised of other Emilys) to cancel Email Guy. True, Owen illegally accessed their email accounts (with Emily R\u2019s Help). He could get in a lot of trouble for it. And what if the Emily gave him a wrong number on purpose? It wouldn\u2019t be the first time a girl did this to get rid of a hopeful suitor. The thing is he doesn\u2019t know. He wants to track her down so he can find out if their brief connection was real. One can see how Owen\u2019s actions might be misinterpreted. But he\u2019s for real and he\u2019s harmless.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Now that you\u2019re read the previous paragraph, FORGET IT! It\u2019s hogwash. Sure, Finding Emily<\/strong> touches on relevant themes, but that\u2019s not why people buy tickets to a movie billed as a rom-com. They want to see a couple of likable people find love with each other after a few complications and misunderstandings. The key word is \u201clikable\u201d. Do we like Owen and Emily R.? YES! Owen, a talented musician afraid to have a go at it, is relatable. He\u2019s a guy in his 20s, alone and awkward, who believes in love. He\u2019s a genuinely nice guy. He just wants to find his person. Fearn is absolutely believable in the role. Even better, he has strong chemistry with his co-star Rice who\u2019s equally good as Emily R., an intelligent woman looking to dispel the world\u2019s romantic notions of love. She plays Emily as pragmatic rather than angry which I think is the right way to go.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t know if Finding Emily<\/strong> will go down in cinematic history as an enduring rom-com classic. In fact, I highly doubt it. It\u2019s good for what it is though. It\u2019s funny, romantic and predictable in the right way. It\u2019s cinematic comfort food. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finding Emily (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (sexual references, language, some crude material, drug references)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alicia MacDonald\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rachel Hirons\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Morgan Kibby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Rachel Clark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 28, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Prasanna Puwanarajah, Sadie Soverall, Cora Kirk, Jack Riddiford, Isabella Laughland, Nadia Parkes, Minnie Driver, Timothy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14936,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Finding-Emily-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14935"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14954,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14935\/revisions\/14954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}