New to Netflix today is the Turkish romantic comedy-drama, Make Me Believe (aka Sen Inandir). The movie – directed by Evren Karabiyik Günaydin and Murat Saraçoglu – stars Ayça Aysin Turan and Ekin Koç and follows the story of two twenty-somethings, who find love after their grandmas play matchmakers.
In the film, Sahra works for a high-profile magazine, while Deniz is a photographer. Both have busy lives and little time for romance, and what time they do have spare is devoted to their grandmas, who happen to live next door to each other.
Both of these grandmas are best friends and believe that Sahra and Deniz would make the perfect couple. The only problem is, Sahra and Deniz – who have known each other since childhood – don’t seem to like each other very much, making it very difficult for the grandmas to bring them together.
But when Sahra discovers that Deniz is the hot-shot photographer she desperately needs for her magazine, she makes an effort to become friendlier with him. This in turn leads to the pair spending more time together, but will it also lead to something more?
Bland, dated, and very generic, Make Me Believe is a plodding romance story, which tells a by-the-numbers tale that is so well-worn you can practically see tread marks on the screen. Within ten minutes of watching this movie you will know exactly where it is going and what will happen, and boy, does that make the remaining 90-minutes a chore to sit through.
With Make Me Believe, there’s no excitement, no surprises, and no depth. Sure, it is competently put together, it looks picturesque, and the cast are fine, but it’s boring to watch and it drags beyond belief.
In terms of the comedic aspects of the film, all attempts at comedy are pretty basic. The grandmas do a bit of meddling, the audience is supposed to find it mildly amusing (it’s not), and that’s about it.
With regards to the romance and the drama, Sahra and Deniz don’t get on, then they do, then they fall out, and then they make up, etc. It’s all very predictable, and as with the comedy, it all falls flat.
You could switch the movie on, close your eyes, and just through the music alone you would know exactly what is going on in the film at every step of the way. The movie’s score does a great deal of the heavy lifting, telling you what parts are comedy, which are romance, and which are drama, without you needing to even follow the story.
However, I don’t recommend you switch on the movie, close your eyes, and listen to the music because ultimately that would be a waste of your time. In fact, I don’t recommend you switch on the movie at all; simply go do something more fruitful.
Make Me Believe is not a car crash of a film, nor is it something so polarising you’ll be debating it with friends for decades to come, instead it is just a very ordinary picture. It tells a story everyone has seen countless times before and it’ll be forgotten about within minutes of switching it off.
There are plenty of movies you could be watching at present, from big screen films such as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Greatest Days, to streaming titles like Extraction 2 or Flamin’ Hot. I recommend you try out one of these if you’re looking for something to watch, and don’t bother with Make Me Believe.
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