Prime Video might have a big fight on its hands while vying for position as the best streaming service overall, but it has certainly carved out a big niche for itself when it comes to romantic movies and shows. It has a whole heap of these, including some massive hit franchises like The Summer I Turned Pretty and the Culpa movies – and now it's adding another.
It just unveiled a first trailer for Maintenance Required, which will hit the streaming platform on 8 October, and it looks like a pretty charming little romance movie, with a twist that many people in the comments are pointing out has already been used very famously once before. Its main characters are slowly building a relationship, but they're doing so entirely through text messages.
So, the methodology might be more modern, but that's fundamentally a very similar premise to that of You've Got Mail, the iconic romance movie that saw Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan slowly but surely fall for each other before they'd even formally met. The similarities don't end there.
You've Got Mail had Meg Ryan as an independent bookshop owner, and Hanks as a bigger business owner moving into the area and threatening her shop's future. Well, Prime Video's movie mirrors that but with mechanics' shops. Riverdale alumnus Madelaine Petsch plays Charlie, who works at an all-women chop shop that comes under threat from the big firm that Jacob Scipio as Beau works for.
So, it's genuinely a like-for-like copy of the story, although there doesn't seem to be any official acknowledgement of this, or involvement from the creators of You've Got Mail. Rather, it's probably just a creative team being a little cheeky and hoping that people have either forgotten the 90s movie or haven't ever seen it.
The comments aren't letting that slide, though, with one person writing: "Wow, what a new idea! How do they come up with those plotlines?" Whether or not the movie can earn itself back into credit with romcom fans will only become clear when it releases, of course.
