The Perfect First Date
2022 · 13m · USA
Directed by Christopher J. Hall
Genres: comedy, LGBTQ+, romance
Two men meet for a perfectly normal first date — until one realizes the other is secretly recording the encounter as a pilot for his reality show. Things spiral from there.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
This is the kind of premise that makes you audibly gasp — the meet-cute mugging for the camera before either guy knows there IS a camera, that rug-pull where intimacy becomes content. Hall weaponizes the exact anxieties that kill most indie romcoms and turns them into the joke itself.
A tidy escalation within the rom-com form, executing the reveal with clean timing and enough awareness of its own genre conventions to earn the darker turn; it knows what it's playing with and respects the architecture.
The genius move is how Hall holds the vulnerability genuine until the moment it breaks — that specific beat where one guy's sincere nervousness becomes retroactively grotesque data — and it's a single-cut transition that does all the moral work.
Reviews
Smart, funny, and touching.
Festivals
- Sherman Oaks Film Festival 2022