{"id":652708,"date":"2026-03-13T12:56:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T12:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/652708\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T12:56:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T12:56:20","slug":"maya-hawke-lewis-pullman-romantic-dramedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/652708\/","title":{"rendered":"Maya Hawke, Lewis Pullman Romantic Dramedy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s not that Charlie (Lewis Pullman<\/a>) and Julia (Maya Hawke<\/a>) are no longer in love with each other. It\u2019s obvious from the first minutes of Wishful Thinking, Graham Parkes\u2019 clever and funny directorial debut, that they very much are, trading compliments with the friskiness of two people who know each other well enough to feel completely at ease, yet still find each other thrilling enough to flirt with.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s that for all the affection \u2014 warm, lively, sexy \u2014 coursing between them, they can\u2019t seem to stop fighting. Case in point: Within moments of the exchange described above, the couple have talked themselves into an all-night cage match of an argument, packed with loaded phrases that make it clear they\u2019ve been down this exact road many times before.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tWishful Thinking\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA literally world-changing kind of love.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue:<\/strong> SXSW Film Festival (Narrative Feature Competition)
Cast:<\/strong> Maya Hawke, Lewis Pullman, Amita Rao, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Jake Shane, Randall Park, Eric Rahill, Kate Berlant, Sophie Lachman
Director-screenwriter:<\/strong> Graham Parkes
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 45 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWere Julia and Charlie any other couple, this would be a problem for just them. In Wishful Thinking, a bit of karmic mojo turns it into a problem for everyone. Perhaps there\u2019s something a bit solipsistic about the idea that reality itself might bend around how one\u2019s own relationship is going. But don\u2019t clich\u00e9s like \u201chappy wife, happy life\u201d suggest we all understand the feeling?<\/p>\n

\n\tUnable to get along but unwilling to break up, Charlie, a struggling musician, and Julia, an ambitious but frustrated video game designer, bemoan that there isn\u2019t some magical fix for their issues. Then, suddenly, there is. At the insistence of a woo-woo friend (Sophie Lachman), they attend a couples-therapy seminar hosted by the Tillies, TikTok-famous twin gurus (Kate Berlant plays both) who preach concepts like manifestation and \u201ctwin flames.\u201d Prompted to empathize with each other and remember what first attracted them (illustrated in a lovely split-screen flashback that juxtaposes her memory of their meet-cute against his), the couple go home feeling more blissfully in sync than they have in ages.<\/p>\n

\n\tSoon, however, it becomes apparent that it\u2019s not just their own moods that fluctuate with the state of their relationship. When they\u2019re happy, all their hopes come true. Their plants thrive. Their careers advance. Even the crypto market, into which Charlie\u2019s dopiest friend (Eric Rahill) had persuaded him to throw some coins, booms. When they\u2019re fighting, their fears are realized: Furniture breaks, work sours, sea levels rise. Now their domestic bliss isn\u2019t just a matter of personal fulfillment, but an imperative that has the potential to save the world or destroy it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s a goofy premise that would be done no favors by thinking about the rules too hard. So, wisely, Parkes does not really try. Instead, he applies it as a Charlie Kaufman-lite thought experiment focused on exactly two people. Julia may fret about how their romance impacts world events (\u201cI\u2019ll handle climate change and you can get income inequality,\u201d she suggests to Charlie) but even she finally comes to the conclusion \u2014 off-puttingly self-absorbed but, in the context of the film, logically sound \u2014 that for the sake of Charlie\u2019s mom\u2019s health or the fates of small island nations, \u201cWe just have to focus on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWithin that experiment are, initially, some very big laughs. I\u2019d transcribe some of the best lines here, but that\u2019d do no justice to the perfectly timed line deliveries from Hawke and especially Pullman (not to mention smaller appearances by Jake Shane as Julia\u2019s overly devoted prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Jeff or Amita Rao as her snarky best friend). A lengthy sequence of Julia and Charlie purposely pissing each other off to test their mystical ability is the film\u2019s big comic centerpiece, but my favorite running gag involved a beloved Hollywood actor\u2019s life hanging in the balance, on the basis of a bit of tossed-off snark from Charlie.<\/p>\n

\n\tWithout losing the sense of humor, Wishful Thinking starts to build in deeper feelings as well. The strong chemistry between Pullman and Hawke ensures that even at their worst, Charlie and Julia never come across as hateful. Their jabs come from a place of wounded love, not cruelty or contempt, and they\u2019re never so furious that they can\u2019t make each other laugh by trying to \u201csexy dance [their] way out of this,\u201d swaying their hips to \u201980s synth-pop classics.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s one thing, however, for the pair to scream about each other\u2019s exes, or make up with incredible sex. It\u2019s trickier for them to navigate less explosive but more deeply rooted mismatches, like Charlie\u2019s frustration at Julia\u2019s workaholism and Julia\u2019s disinterest in getting married and starting a family. Or to figure out what to make of those spells when nothing\u2019s really wrong, but nothing\u2019s quite right, either. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn the face of such mundane but undeniable problems, even a connection fierce enough to conjure fireworks or earthquakes might have its limits. But Wishful Thinking\u2019s last and most moving insight is that love can result in more than one kind of happy ending.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not that Charlie (Lewis Pullman) and Julia (Maya Hawke) are no longer in love with each other.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":652709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,167134,55093,53,275577,94376,276339,276921,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-652708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-lewis-pullman","tag-maya-hawke","tag-movies","tag-south-by-southwest","tag-sxsw","tag-sxsw-2026","tag-sxsw-reviews","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116221980437542845","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}