The first 80 minutes of Netflix’s The Perfect Find, which began streaming today, are adorable. Based on the 2016 self-published novel of the same name by Tia Williams, it’s got all the makings of a classic, goes-down-easy romantic comedy: playful banter, painful pining, and hot-as-hell kissing.
Sure, there’s also twist, but there’s always a twist, whether it’s falling in love via a long-distance radio show, or young boy magically turning into an adult man. In the case of The Perfect Find, the twist is the age gap between the love interests. Jenna (played by Gabrielle Union) is a 40-year-old career-driven woman who falls in love with her boss’s twenty-something son, Eric (played by Keith Powers). Everyone is a consenting adult, and the chemistry between Union and Powers is more than electric enough to sell it. Not every part of the story makes sense—Jenna’s job at a high-end fashion magazine where she never writes or edits anything, and seems to be one of three employees, is particularly unbelievable—but I was willing to suspend my disbelief for the sake of this cute romance… until that ending.
The Perfect Find ending is more than just an unexpected plot twist. It’s a WTF, out-of-left-field head scratcher. Let’s get into it. The Perfect Find spoilers ahead, obviously.
Let’s get this out of the way: Jenna gets pregnant with Eric’s baby. No, it’s not a planned pregnancy, and no, Eric does not take it well. Here’s how it goes down: Jenna and Eric break-up after they are caught having sex by Eric’s mom—aka Jenna’s boss—and Jenna is fired from her job. They go their separate ways. Months pass, and after the new year, Jenna reaches out to Eric and asks him to meet up with her. Eric thinks she just wants to reconnect. Boy, is he in for a surprise.
Jenna breaks the news to Eric by sliding an ultrasound of their baby across the table. He doesn’t take it well, but, in his defense, he was blindsided. He is in his 20s and isn’t sure if he even wants to have children. Also, obviously, Jenna has known about the baby for several months before she clued Eric in. Jenna mentions Eric once saying he didn’t have the parenting gene, which Eric did technically say in passing, during a conversation where they were both naked and both saying a lot of stuff. (No one made a big deal of that at the time, so it seems weird that she fixated on it.)
Eric accuses Jenna of getting pregnant on purpose, which, oof. Then he storms out of the restaurant. Suddenly, those cute romantic comedy vibes are completely gone. What had started as a cute reconciliation scene escalated—from zero to 100—into an entirely different genre of movie. This pregnancy curveball feels like a Lifetime original soap opera, not a Netflix romantic comedy! Maybe I’m the only one, but for me, it ruined the movie. What happened to my light-hearted love story?
Eric does come around eventually after Jenna and her former boss (aka Eric’s mother, played by Gina Torres) have a heart-to-heart about motherhood. Mom promises to whip her boy into shape, and she does. Eric shows up for Jenna’s next doctor’s appointment, and the couple learns they will be having a baby boy. Jenna suggests naming the baby after Eric’s father, Otis. (After he nearly just abandoned you to be a single mother?! OK, Jenna. Sure.)
In the final scene of the movie, Eric and Jenna attend a gala for their former magazine. They are the talk of the red carpet, despite the fact that neither of them works at the company anymore. Jenna, looking very pregnant, tells a red carpet reporter that this isn’t the comeback—it’s “the perfect find.” What does that mean? What’s the perfect find? Eric? The gala? Her new career as a teacher? Make it make sense!
But it doesn’t matter, because that’s the end of the movie. With that, the movie ends, leaving audiences reeling from that emotional rollercoaster.
So, yes, Jenna does get pregnant at the end of The Perfect Find book, which is why The Perfect Find movie ends this way. However, in the book, Jenna’s desire to have a child is featured much more prominently—and, indeed, is the primary reason that Jenna breaks up with Eric. In other words, the twist that she ends up pregnant with Eric’s child likely felt less out of the blue for readers. But in the movie, it truly seems to come out of nowhere.
I’m glad that Jenna and Eric got their happy ending, but, god, at what cost? So many other things were changed for the movie adaptation, so why not this? It feels like a missed opportunity to make the story better fit the genre of movie that director Numa Perrier otherwise made. But maybe that’s just me.