I Love You Forever is a 2024 American comedy drama film written and directed by Cazzie David and Elisa Kalani and starring Sofia Black-D'Elia, Ray Nicholson and Cazzie David.
Contents
Plot
Mackenzie is a college law student who lives with two roommates, Ally and Lucas. One day, she meets a young man named Finn who works as a newscaster, and they hit it off. They go on a romantic first date and proceed to enter into a relationship. Things go well at first, and Finn declares his love for Mackenzie over a news broadcast. Eventually, however, Finn displays many unsavory characteristics, including insecurity, neediness, manipulativeness, and self-righteousness, as well as increasingly critical behavior. Mackenzie remains conciliatory towards Finn, though, and forgives the toxic aspects of his personality. One day, Mackenzie runs into an old hookup of hers named Jake, and she semi-reluctantly gives him her new phone number. Finn discovers this and goes into a rage, even threatening to commit suicide. This leads to Mackenzie and Finn splitting up. Mackenzie is upset and blames herself for the breakup. One night, she watches Finn make a news broadcast, and finds him professing his love for a new woman on air (just as he had done for Mackenzie). Mackenzie reacts incredulously.
Cast
Sofia Black-D'Elia as Mackenzie
Ray Nicholson as Finn
Jon Rudnitsky as Lucas
Cazzie David as Ally
Raymond Cham Jr. as Jake
Oliver Cooper as Harrison
Ashley Marie Jones as Hotel Manager
Release
The film premiered at South by Southwest on March 9, 2024. It was released in the United States on February 7, 2025.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 77% of 22 critics' reviews are positive. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 72 out of 100, based on four critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Samantha Bergeson of IndieWire graded the film a B+.
Stephen Saito of Variety gave the film a positive review, calling it "a fresh take on a toxic relationship."
Fletcher Peters of The Daily Beast also gave the film a positive review and wrote, "If that is the goal, as sad as it may be, then it is successful; this is a feel-bad movie."
Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film a negative review and wrote, "...this is a movie that wears out its welcome early, spinning around the same relationship ideas, and, worst of all, failing to give its lead enough character depth to justify spending so much time with her."