'Choose Love' review: Doesn't work as a movie or interactive game

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Netflix continues its foray into interactive entertainment with "Choose Love," a romantic comedy that allows the viewer to make decisions both big and small for protagonist Cami (Laura Marano).

These range from whether to "go easy" or "chew him out" to determining the choices Cami should make about the three men vying for her affections. They are lawyer boyfriend Paul (Scott Michael Foster), rock star Rex (Avan Jogia) and "the one that got away," the activist Jack (Jordi Webber).

In the tradition of Netflix's "Black Mirror: Bandersnatch" and "Escape The Undertaker," among others, the viewer's decisions — offered as a choice between one of two or three scenarios on-screen — shape where the plot goes and how it ends.

MY SAY If "Choose Love" did not have its interactive component, it would be difficult to imagine a more torturous movie.

It's completely insipid from the first moment until the last, no matter what button gets pressed. When the dialogue includes exchanges like this, it becomes hard to avoid the conclusion that no one bothered to try: "You're so gorgeous," one of the guys says to Cami. "No I'm not," she replies. "Yeah, you are," he insists.

Somewhere upstairs you can imagine a collective groan from Nora Ephron, Billy Wilder and the other screenwriters of Hollywood past who could actually write a romantic exchange.

The choices Cami faces could not be more inane, and her general journey over the course of the, uh, experience makes her nothing short of reprehensible. She's tremendously self-absorbed, making her needs come well before any of her prospective partners. She's prone to lying, even canceling on a carefully planned dinner to go hang out with one of the other crushes.

The movie offers nothing but one-dimensional characters, scripted as if they came straight from the rom-com well of clichés, without so much as one iota of a distinguishing feature. There's nothing insightful, amusing, or thoughtful about any of it. And there's no attempt to make it so.

The entire world of "Choose Love" amounts to a blank canvas for the viewer to manipulate at will.

The key question about it all looms large: do any of the usual standards by which one would process a movie, or any other work of art, apply here? Or, is this fundamentally a game, where nothing matters beyond the decision points?

If it's the former, it's a tremendous flop. If it's the latter, it's not exactly riveting either. The stakes are so low that it's impossible to be invested in one path or another. The movie makes a big show about letting the viewer jump back and erase previous decisions to see all of the potential paths for Cami, but not even the most ardent romantic comedy fans seem likely to bother exploring all the iterations.

However one feels about the whole concept of interactive filmmaking — whether it's seen as a new frontier, or antithetical to the whole concept of telling a story — there should be general agreement that this is the wrong genre for it.

BOTTOM LINE It's either a really bad movie, a really bad game, or both.