On demand: "If You Were The Last"

Directed by Kristian Mercado from a script by Angela Bourassa, the likable straight-to-streaming romcom If You Were The Last cops to one of its influences early on by having its prospective lovers debate whether or not it was worth the time, money and effort to bring just one man back from Mars in Ridley Scott's The Martian, even if that man was Matt Damon. No such immediate cavalry is coming to the rescue of Anthony Mackie and Zoë Chao, astronauts stranded in a kids'-bedroom idea of space, complete with papier-mâché planets and a shuttle rec room done up like a sitcom den. So the pair spar and bicker, watch old movies together, grow weed (in his case) and - having exhausted all other options, and with their finite resources running out - eventually nudge up against the question of bowing out with one final big bang. As Chao thoughtfully tells her intergalactic roomie: "I mean, you have the only penis for a million miles." Other influences reveal themselves. The high percentage of art design on this spacecraft indicates a fondness for Michel Gondry's homemade fantasias - Chao's character has repurposed a rack of electric drills as vibrators - and with that comes the possibility that anybody who doesn't dig these leads might find the whole cutesy rather than the desired cute. In some ways, Mercado has to crank up the colour, to mitigate against the underlying bleakness of this scenario: a tie-dye rewrite of the Jennifer Lawrence/Chris Pratt dud Passengers - complete with a dead third wheel (played by a familiar comedy face) who serves as the astronauts' confidante whenever the plot demands - IYWTL has to usher us past our awareness things could get a whole lot worse if this pair weren't so obviously hot for one another and weren't bound for some kind of happy ending. On balance, they deserve it. Mackie and Chao, established supporting players seizing an opportunity to position themselves front and centre for ninety minutes, demonstrate good chemistry; more importantly, they bend this plot round in the direction of believable human conversation and experience. If the wider picture is cosmic, what's observed up close - two people undergoing a period of intense, dramatic change - isn't so far away from our own backyards finally. Fluff, but - as with those vibrators - skilfully mounted and pleasure-giving.

If You Were The Last is currently streaming via NOW, and available to rent via Prime Video and YouTube.