THE WRONG PARIS - Mark Reviews Movies

The Wrong Paris, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2025

If The Wrong Paris kept the courage of its satirical convictions, it might have been on to something. Here's a romantic comedy set in the insulated, isolated, and insincere world of reality TV, where contestants claiming to be looking for or to find true love all suspiciously seem perfectly content with the other prizes and/or a television season's worth of fame. Screenwriter Nicole Henrich seems to know this is true but is also unwilling to carry that knowledge through to its inevitable end in this story.

Instead, it does become a more straightforward and, given how much it nudges and pokes the phoniness of its reality TV backdrop, disingenuous romance. The comedy is effective enough while it lasts, at least.

Even the setup is fairly clever. After establishing our generic but good-natured protagonist and her dreams of going to art school in Paris, the movie reveals that the TV show, in which a group of women vie for the attention and affection of an eligible bachelor by way of assorted games and plenty of drama, has played a prank on the participants. They're not traveling to the anticipated Paris, the one in France, but to the city in Texas, which is only about 60 miles from where our main character Dawn (Miranda Cosgrove) lives.

Dawn, by the way, has no intention of buying into the show and no fantastical notion that such a fake situation could result in true love. She just needs some financial help getting to Paris and paying some of the tuition fees, since Dawn is the kind of young woman to cover some of the medical bills her grandmother (played by Frances Fisher) accrued after a recent fall. Her younger sister (played by Ava Bianchi) comes up with the scheme. Basically, Dawn can just botch her participation on the show as soon as she gets to France and take a decent appearance fee for her time.

All of that, of course, is kind of irrelevant once the plane lands at an airport about a 45-minute drive from Dawn's farm. After Dawn explains that she wants out of the show and why, Rachel (Yvonne Orji), one of the show's producers, is quick to point out that there could be legal ramifications for her dishonesty, so now, Dawn has to put in the effort of actually looking like she wants to be there.

Yes, all of this is convoluted, and we haven't even gotten to the bachelor the contestants are trying to impress. He's Trey (Pierson Fodé), a charming and muscular cowboy who owns a ranch that has been in his family for a few generations, and by chance, he and Dawn have already met at a bar in her hometown, where there was some chemistry between the two. It's funny how much Henrich's script has to go out of its way to eventually try to convince us that real love might develop between two people on a reality TV show such as this one.

Again, it's also funny, though, how this setup plays. The screenplay gives us assorted archetypes, such as a woman who's literally known as Cinderella (Madeleine Arthur) looking for her charming prince, another contestant (played by Hannah Stocking) who desperately wants a baby, the bad-ass biker Heather (Veronica Long), and Dawn's nerdy roommate Jasmine (Christin Park), who's a scientist looking for money for an important project. With them in place, the story pits them against each other in silly competitions that make the entire affair look more ridiculous than it already is.

The humor here is generally broad, mainly pratfalls and slapstick, but within the context of this show, it is genuinely amusing, too. Dawn really wants nothing to do with any of it, of course, but that's tough to do when a contestant like Lexi (Madison Pettis) is so determined to win and makes Dawn a target. The two end up in a conflict on an obstacle course that lands them in a mud pit for a wrestling match.

It's over-the-top but rightly so, so when the movie, directed by Janeen Damian, attempts to ground itself in the supposedly genuine bond that forms between Dawn and Trey, the romance doesn't come across as some anomaly. It just feels counterintuitive to everything else the material is doing, and no amount of charm from Cosgrove and Fodé can hide that. The two actors try, to be sure, but they're up against the movie's clashing intentions, which make both the comedy and the romance look hypocritical.

The Wrong Paris has the right idea when it lambasts the clichés, formula, and obviously staged melodrama of reality television. It takes a big misstep, however, by falling into the trap of embracing the clichés, formula, and melodrama of a cookie-cutter romantic comedy by the end. The premise and the comedy deserve better than that.

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