I’m not going to lie, I was over COVID-19 storylines in film and television before those stories even became a thing. When I watch TV, it’s to escape all the realities that lie right outside my window; any second my mind is able to take a break from everything going on in our world is something I cherish. When a lot of favorite shows came back on in September or even later than that due to delays, they were dealing with Covid. Some examples being Grey’s Anatomy, Shameless, This Is Us, and the list really goes on. We even got a movie with an evolved strain of a virus called Songbird and what a choice that was. Talk about the absolute wrong time to release a film like that considering so many people are still dying from the virus. Then again, we were never going to escape these. They were always going to be a thing whether we liked it or not which left us to only hope that we were at the very least getting decent storylines and content. The jury’s still out on that. 

A little over a week ago the trailer dropped for an HBO max film titled Locked Down. With the current state of our world, it wasn’t hard to guess what sort of film this would be. In it, we follow Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave) who play a couple on the brink of a break up who are now stuck in the first two week lockdown of the pandemic. Both are obviously losing their minds at now only being under lock down, but being under lock down together. 

I didn’t go in hating this for the sole reason that I had two hours of Hathaway and Ejiofor acting opposite each other and I absolutely adore both of them; Hathaway being one of my favorite actresses. The only thing was, an hour into the film I straight up had gotten nothing out of it. I had just watched two people who very clearly should not be together, hate each other, their jobs, their lives and so on. Only for a completely random heist storyline to appear forty minutes before the film is supposed to end. I was completely down for it but in the end, I just kept thinking what was the point of it all. Not to say there weren’t any enjoyable moments. There were some fun cameos from Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project) who is amazing in absolutely anything, and Ben Stiller (There’s Something About Mary) was fun to watch as well. 

I just don’t know why anyone thought this is exactly what we should make right now, or even ever really. I’m sure they had fun making it but I can’t say I had fun watching it; and I’m not sure if many will. The two leads are fantastic as always and turn out great performances, but other than that, this was sort of a waste of my time. But if you’re reading this and you’re someone who enjoys these Covid storylines and get a kick out of them, then there’s definitely much more for you to enjoy here.