Love Hurts
Universal Pictures | Release Date: February 7, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
34
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 43 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
18
Negative:
21
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonFeb 6, 2025
Love Hurts is that rare action movie almost devoid of noticeable computer effects. It’s a hand-to-hand, bone-crunching martial arts movie with tongue firmly in cheek, resembling those Jackie Chan action comedies from the 1980s and ’90s. Read full review
68
Paste MagazineMatthew JacksonFeb 6, 2025
Though Quan and his supporting cast are often a delight, and the film’s fight scenes are worth strapping in for, this is a movie that makes a choppy mess of its brisk runtime, and wastes a lot of its potential with a molasses-slow, often baffling second act. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonFeb 6, 2025
Love Hurts is an absolute mess, but its hero almost saves the day. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineKyle TurnerFeb 6, 2025
The film is startlingly earnest in its affection for Ke Huy Quan and making him play both to and against type. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 6, 2025
The film is ultimately an action comedy that is as sickly saccharine and over-the-top as Valentine’s Day itself. For a cool hour and 23 minutes, Love Hurts allows us to enjoy every minute of its absurdity, and you’ll never look at a boba straw the same way ever again. Read full review
58
The PlaylistChase HutchinsonFeb 6, 2025
It is a film you won’t fall head over heels for, but one you can’t help loving many parts of. You’ll just have to do your best to fondly recall the good parts, namely Quan and Lynch, while hopefully forgetting all the rest. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubJacob OllerFeb 6, 2025
Love Hurts proves that honest emotions aren’t everything; sometimes you can just buy yourself enough goodwill to get by with last-minute junk. Read full review
54
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiFeb 7, 2025
If this is just one bullet point in your Valentine’s Day to-do list, an excuse to hold hands or neck in a darkened theater, or maybe as a litmus test for your date’s artistic tastes, it’s a harmless, mostly generic action rom-com. Read full review
51
PolygonTasha RobinsonFeb 6, 2025
To the degree that Love Hurts feels like a movie at all, it’s because Quan puts so much heart into his work, and so much squeaky-voiced comedic talent, paired with the speed and flexibility that makes a fight scene thrilling. Read full review
50
We Got This CoveredFrancisca TinocoFeb 10, 2025
A harmless, unexciting directorial debut that tries to do too much too fast but is thankfully propped up by an always delightful Ke Huy Quan in his first ever leading role. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Radheyan SimonpillaiFeb 7, 2025
The plot and most action sequences here are as cookie-cutter as the community homes Quan’s Gable is selling. Read full review
50
The Daily BeastNick SchagerFeb 6, 2025
The main takeaway from this dreary dud, however, is that winning an Academy Award is no guarantee of continued big-screen success. Read full review
50
SlashfilmWitney SeiboldFeb 6, 2025
Love Hurts marks the first leading role for Ke Huy Quan, and he avails himself well enough. He doesn't ever shimmer off the screen, and he doesn't handle the romance elements perfectly, but he possesses an appealing hangdog quality that feels human and relatable. However mediocre the movie around him, one always has the instinct to cheer him on. Read full review
42
Original-CinChris KnightFeb 6, 2025
The good news is that the whole shebang lasts just 83 minutes, stem to stern. The bad news is that you can only coast along on your love of Quan’s natural charm and screen presence for 60- or 65-minutes tops. Read full review
42
IndieWireKate ErblandFeb 6, 2025
It’s a simple enough conceit, but one made consistently confusing by a distinct lack of energy, excitement, and cohesive editing. Never before has 83 minutes felt so very long. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinFeb 7, 2025
So much of the film’s (notably slight) running time is squandered on filler – a subplot involving bickering henchmen consumes around a third of the film – that it’s never able to hit its grindhouse stride. Read full review
40
ColliderNate RichardFeb 6, 2025
Unfortunately, Love Hurts never does its stars justice as a lazily slapped-together action-comedy with a script that feels like it never had a second draft. Read full review
40
EmpireJohn NugentFeb 6, 2025
Quan is typically charismatic in a film that underserves his talents: an action-comedy with a solid amount of the former, but not much of the latter. Read full review
40
ScreenCrushMatt SingerFeb 6, 2025
Quan remains an extremely likable actor, as well as an impressive martial artist. (Even before Everything Everywhere All at Once, he had worked on several Hollywood productions as a fight choreographer.) It’s great to see him back on the screen, but he’s let down by his material here. When he’s not kicking butt, Love Hurts is downright painful. Read full review
40
The GuardianRyan GilbeyFeb 6, 2025
As Valentine’s Day treats go, however, Love Hurts is the cinematic equivalent of a wilted bouquet from a petrol station forecourt. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckFeb 6, 2025
Straining for its ungainly combination of action, romance and silly comedy, Love Hurts doesn’t fully succeed in any department. Read full review
40
IGNA.A. Dowd Feb 6, 2025
But as a comedy, Love Hurts is pretty stale; when not trotting out dopey crime-flick caricatures, it’s simply leaning on the supposed hilarity of a sunny house hunter with a secret talent for breaking bones. You’ve seen many versions of this premise, and better ones, too. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 7, 2025
It’s such a drag to see Ke Huy Quan undermined so persistently by the script and the role handing him his first lead in a movie. Read full review
38
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperFeb 6, 2025
The dreary, derivative and punchless action comedy “Love Hurts” is proof that a movie can have an 83-minute running time and still seem like a slow-motion slog. Read full review
38
The Associated PressLindsey BahrFeb 6, 2025
Artificiality as an aesthetic is all fine and good, but Love Hurts feels a little too much like the charmless, ripped-from-the-Magnolia-showroom homes that Marvin is hawking to perky yuppies around Milwaukee. Read full review
37
Washington PostChris KlimekFeb 6, 2025
With Love Hurts, 87North has gone farther south than ever, churning out a muddled, mean-spirited action comedy that manages to feel slack and listless despite a flyweight run time of only 83 minutes. Read full review
30
Film ThreatAlan NgFeb 11, 2025
Love Hurts is a prime example of what happens when a film spreads itself too thin trying to juggle multiple genres—it drops all the balls. Ultimately, it’s a forgettable attempt at blending action and romance, proving once again that genre mashups rarely deliver a knockout. Read full review
30
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergFeb 7, 2025
At 83 minutes, Love Hurts falls somewhere between making a virtue of brevity and wheezing its way to the finish line. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithFeb 7, 2025
The intricately choreographed fight scenes are amusing enough, not that they have a lot of impact given the overbearingly silly musical score and the lurching, chaotic plot. Read full review
30
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 7, 2025
Love Hurts feels like it might have once been something, but in its current iteration it exists basically as a series of fight scenes stitched together with the thinnest of narratives. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing — indeed, it could have been a great thing — if the action was in any way inventive or engaging. Read full review
30
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonFeb 7, 2025
Love Hurts is an action-romance that fizzles like a science-class volcano made of baking soda and cheese. The individual ingredients are fine: two killers on the run from punishment and their personal feelings for each other, played by Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose. But their chemistry is all wrong. Read full review
30
The Film VerdictAlonso DuraldeFeb 6, 2025
The barely-crafted romance between Marvin and Rose — for all the individual charisma of Quan and DeBose, there’s no sense that these two have ever experienced affection for the other — relies upon the screenplay telling us (via clumsy internal monologues) that they love each other rather than showing it, which is just one element of the bad writing on display here. Read full review
30
VarietyPeter DebrugeFeb 6, 2025
Most audiences want action to feel like action, whereas Eusebio makes it look too much like choreography: No matter how dynamic, every fight scene seems rehearsed to within an inch of its life. Read full review
30
Screen DailyTim GriersonFeb 6, 2025
The perfunctory martial-arts sequences and convoluted plotting conspire to make this a painfully uninspired proposition. Read full review
30
Rolling StoneDavid FearFeb 6, 2025
Love may hurt, sure. But it’s not nearly as painful as being forced to watch a great actor stuck in a bad movie. Read full review
25
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliFeb 7, 2025
This is a painfully bad movie that thinks it’s trying to be Jackie Chan-meets-John Wick and flies so far wide of the target that it might have been shot by a blind man. Read full review
25
Movie NationRoger MooreFeb 7, 2025
This one lands punches but rarely laughs, reaches for pathos where there is none and relies heavily on the sentiment that earned Quan an Oscar. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiFeb 6, 2025
“Love Hurts” is only 83 minutes long. “Hurrah!,” you say before it starts. But the film feels endless because the story is such a chore to follow. Read full review
25
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsFeb 6, 2025
Despite Quan’s best efforts, there isn’t one square foot of this tepid film worth buying. Read full review
20
Time OutElizabeth WeitzmanFeb 12, 2025
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie that feels as though it was made by someone who just discovered the collected works of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. Read full review
20
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeFeb 10, 2025
Incoherent, inelegantly choreographed and shot with a colour palette reminiscent of one of those noxious American Candy Stores that have popped up all over London like an outbreak of herpes, this Valentine-themed martial arts action picture is one of the worst of the year so far. Read full review
20
The TimesKevin MaherFeb 7, 2025
It’s badly shot, full of pointless jeopardy-free action sequences, with a flat-lining story and airless characters poorly performed by floundering actors at their lowest ebb. The search continues for DeBose. Read full review
20
Little White LiesMarina AshiotiFeb 7, 2025
At least there is dedication to the spectacle of practical stunt work, owed to director Jonathan Eusebio’s background as a seasoned stunt performer. Read full review
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