Meet Cute

Most people use tanning beds to get a questionable glow and a boost of Vitamin D; Sheila uses one to commit serial emotional kidnapping. If you found a time machine in the back of a Manhattan nail salon, would you use it to win the lottery, or would you use it to perform unsolicited psychological surgery on a total stranger? Meet Cute suggests that for Kaley Cuoco’s Sheila, the answer is a frantic, wide-eyed "both."

Released in late 2022 as a Peacock Original, the film arrived at a weird crossroads for contemporary cinema. We’re currently living in an era where the mid-budget romantic comedy has been exiled from theaters and forced to survive in the wild jungles of streaming platforms. Because of this, these movies have started to get weird to get noticed. I watched this while drinking a lukewarm seltzer that had definitely lost its fizz twenty minutes prior, and honestly, that slightly flat, sharp vibe matched the movie perfectly. It’s a rom-com with a serrated edge, a story that starts with a "magic" premise and quickly spirals into a conversation about the ethics of "fixing" the people we claim to love.

A Tanning Bed Through Time

The setup is pure "streaming era" high-concept: Sheila finds a time machine (that looks like a standard Z-750 tanning unit) and uses it to relive the same night over and over with Gary, played by Pete Davidson. In the beginning, it’s charming in that Groundhog Day or Palm Springs sort of way. They drink Old Fashioneds, they walk across the bridge, they share "authentic" moments that Sheila has actually rehearsed 365 times.

But whereas most time-loop movies are about the protagonist becoming a better person, Sheila decides to use her 24-hour window to travel even further back. She starts visiting Gary’s childhood to "delete" his traumas, hoping to manufacture the "perfect" version of him for her present. The tanning bed is the most hygienic time machine in cinema history, but what Sheila does with it is undeniably messy. It’s a sharp critique of our current "optimization" culture—the idea that we can’t just love someone; we have to A/B test them until all their jagged edges are sanded down.

The Chaos and the Calm

The movie lives or dies on the chemistry between its leads, and it’s a surprisingly effective pairing. Kaley Cuoco, coming off the high-wire act of The Flight Attendant, brings a desperate, vibrating energy to Sheila. She’s not "quirky"; she’s clearly hanging on by a thread, and Cuoco plays that desperation with a manic intensity that makes you genuinely worried for anyone in her orbit.

On the flip side, Pete Davidson is... well, he’s remarkably sweet. In an age where his off-screen persona often overshadows his work, he’s grounded here. He plays Gary with a bewildered vulnerability that makes him the perfect foil for Sheila’s chaos. Pete Davidson is the human equivalent of a weighted blanket in this film, providing a sense of calm that makes Sheila’s interference feel even more invasive. Director Alexandre Lehmann, who previously showed a knack for intimate, dialogue-driven stories in Blue Jay (starring Mark Duplass), keeps the camera tight on their faces. He captures the claustrophobia of a "perfect" date that has been repeated so many times it’s started to rot at the seams.

Why It Slipped Through the Cracks

Despite the star power, Meet Cute kind of vanished into the Peacock void. It’s a "forgotten oddity" of the early 20s, likely because it’s a difficult sell. Is it a comedy? Sometimes. Is it a sci-fi thriller? Sort of. It’s actually a pretty bleak look at mental health and the impossibility of a "perfect" partner. Apparently, the script by Noga Pnueli was a 2018 Black List selection (the industry’s annual list of the best unproduced screenplays), and you can feel that "pre-production" polish in the dialogue.

It likely didn't find a massive audience because it refuses to give the easy, sugary ending that streaming audiences usually crave from their rom-com thumbnails. It’s also a very New York movie—filmed largely in Queens and Manhattan—capturing that specific "night out" energy that felt so precious during the post-pandemic filming boom. It’s a small, weird film that feels like a response to the franchise-heavy landscape; it’s not trying to build a universe, it’s just trying to figure out if two broken people can stand each other for more than 24 hours without a reset button.

Meet Cute doesn’t always stick the landing—the third act gets a bit tangled in its own logic, and the "time machine in a nail salon" remains more of a plot device than a fully realized concept. However, it’s worth a look for anyone tired of the assembly-line romances that usually populate streaming queues. It’s a prickly, uncomfortable, and occasionally very funny look at why we should probably stop trying to edit the people we love. It might not be a masterpiece, but in a sea of predictable content, I’ll take a weird tanning bed movie any day of the week.