A Sharp, Sincere Take on Love Addiction

Read Time:5 Minute, 55 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
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Genre: Romantic Comedy
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director(s): Elizabeth Guest
Writer(s): Elizabeth Guest
Cast: Elizabeth Guest, Andrew Leeds, Ed Begley Jr., Timm Sharp, Keith Carradine, Nicholas Guest, Pamela Guest, Robert Carradine, Joey Bragg, Rachelle Carson-Begley
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Newport Beach Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: LET’S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF offers us the charm of a romcom that doesn’t hide from the messy truth of relationships. Elizabeth Guest, who writes, directs, and stars, takes what could’ve been a formulaic “runaway bride” setup and reshapes it into something far more self-aware—a love story about how easy it is to mistake chaos for connection. The result feels personal, vulnerable, and still funny, proving that sincerity and satire can coexist without one swallowing the other.

At its center is Lydia, played by Guest, with a blend of wit and emotional fatigue that’s both relatable and raw. Lydia’s a serial romantic whose life is a loop of highs and hangovers—emotionally and otherwise. Her boyfriend Tim (Andrew Leeds) is the kind of man who seems written to steady her story, until his big, glittering New York proposal sends her running back to Los Angeles, reeling from the weight of her own heart. What follows is less about a quest for love and more about detoxing from it. Lydia isn’t rebelling against commitment; she’s confronting the part of herself that confuses stability with stagnation.

Guest’s style leans on pulse—scenes unfold like exchanges rather than sketches. There’s a looseness to the dialogue, a sense that characters are talking their way toward clarity instead of delivering prepackaged epiphanies. When Lydia crashes back into the arms (and the spare rooms) of her four parents, the film widens its scope from romantic panic to generational satire. The house becomes a living metaphor for her headspace: overpopulated, well-meaning, and incapable of silence. Each parent adds their own variety of chaos—Pamela Guest and Nicholas Guest as one set, Rachelle Carson-Begley and Ed Begley Jr. as another—and together they create a symphony of misplaced support. It’s a clever inversion of the usual “parents are the problem” trope; here, they’re both the crutch and the mirror (and problem.)

Leeds, as Tim, gives the film a needed anchor. He’s not playing the dull straight man that comedies like this often relegate to background noise. Instead, he’s patient without being passive, a presence that makes Lydia’s turmoil more believable. His late-film reappearance—unexpected but thematically inevitable—shifts the tone from absurdity to reflection, reminding both Lydia and the viewer that closure doesn’t always come with fireworks, but sometimes with understanding. I would love to see Leeds and Guest get some more screentime. I understand the reason, but they worked so well together.

The ensemble is filled with seasoned comedic talent who know how to find nuance in exaggeration. Keith Carradine lends his signature steadiness to Dr. Wagner, the kind of therapist who could double as a philosopher in a holiday sweater. Robert Carradine and Joey Bragg play smaller but memorable roles that expand the film’s comic texture rather than clutter it. Timm Sharp, as James, delivers one of the film’s funniest turns—an earnest disaster of a man whose sincerity borders on self-parody, yet never feels cartoonish. Guest’s casting choices reflect her understanding of tone: she surrounds herself with performers who can play broad humor without puncturing the film’s emotional reality.

What distinguishes LET’S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF from most modern rom-coms is its undercurrent of honesty about recovery—emotional, romantic, and personal. Lydia’s “love addiction” isn’t played for pity; it’s treated as a behavior pattern to be unpacked. Guest, drawing from her own experiences and her earlier web series “Guest Appearances,” brings authenticity to every misstep. In her director’s statement, she notes that tragedy plus writing equals comedy—a sentiment the film embodies. The humor doesn’t erase the ache; it reframes it, showing how self-awareness can coexist with absurdity.

As a debut feature, this is a confident statement of intent. Guest’s humor is rooted in empathy rather than irony; her direction is focused on character over spectacle. She treats the rom-com not as a genre to parody but as a form worth evolving. By embedding real emotion in the familiar rhythms of meet-cutes and misunderstandings, she refreshes the template without dismantling it.

Without question, the film shows its indie roots, but that’s not a bad thing; it reveals the heart and passion of the team behind it. This wasn’t created as a film just to make a checklist; it was Guest's way of telling a story and succeeding in every way. To cap off the film, the last scene is one of the most impassioned back-and-forths that I’ve seen in some time. I honestly wasn’t sure how things were going to wrap up, and this was truly perfection for a film like this!

LET’S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF succeeds because it feels like a movie made by someone who loves people as much as she studies them. It’s a story about learning how to stay, told by a filmmaker who refuses to sit still—and that tension gives it life. For all its laughter, it leaves behind something warmer: the recognition that love, in all its chaos, is only worth keeping when you finally know who’s holding it.

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[photo courtesy of CHRISTMAS GUESTS]

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