Romantic drama All Of You comes with a big sci-fi hook. In a near-future version of London, a glossy tech company has created a soulmate “test” that pairs each person who takes it with their perfect match—happiness scientifically guaranteed. It’s a premise that seems right out of an episode of Black Mirror, but though All Of You indulges in some lightly futuristic touches, its tone is more earnestly retro than forward-looking. There are surface similarities to sci-fi romances like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Timer, but at its heart All Of You is more like a cross between two pre-dating-app classics: When Harry Met Sally and Brief Encounter.
Subbing in for Harry is Brett Goldstein’s Simon, a wry but caring journalist who’s more in line with Goldstein’s softer real-life persona than his grumpy Ted Lasso alter ego. Simon’s “Sally” is his old university friend Laura (Imogen Poots), a flighty, sarcastic cool girl who shares his dark sense of humor. From the moment they first slip into a gentle hug, their connection is palpable. As they banter on the tube ride to Laura’s test appointment, Simon jokes that this is going to ruin their friendship; no one keeps up with their college buddies once they’ve found their soulmate. For his part, he’d rather just find love organically than take the clinical approach. Or perhaps he just feels he’s already found his perfect match.
Scientifically, however, Laura’s soulmate isn’t Simon but Lukas (Steven Cree), a responsible Scotsman whose straightforwardness at least theoretically balances out Laura’s sarcasm. The film casually, almost disorientingly hops forward in time as Laura and Lukas get more serious and Simon begins dating Laura’s friend Andrea (Zawe Ashton). Yet even as the years pass, the chemistry between Laura and Simon never fades. If anything, the longing between them only grows as Simon provides a certain breezy escape from Laura’s increasingly adult concerns.
As with this summer’s Materialists, one can read All Of You as a commentary on modern dating app culture and the obsession with optimizing and gamifying our lives like we’re algorithms to be perfected. But, also like Materialists, All Of You also deals with themes as timeless as love itself: the fear of ruining a friendship by making it romantic, the fear of ruining a romance by chasing the fantasy of something better, the fear of ruining your life by remaining stuck in indecision. As the film moves into weighty topics like marriage, babies, and parental death, the “soulmate” conceit becomes a bit of a cheat code to give the Lukas half of this love triangle equal weight, even as the film narrows its focus to just Simon and Laura.
In that sense, All Of You lives and dies on the performances from Goldstein and Poots, who are essentially in a two-hander play for much of its runtime. Simon and Laura are the type of people more likely to crack a joke than to actually say what they mean—summed by a vignette where Simon rushes Laura to the hospital for a medical emergency she doesn’t want to acknowledge. So it’s a good thing that the two lead performers excel at giving their characters rich, complex inner lives that peek through their cheeky banter. There’s a childish self-centeredness to Laura, who chases whatever makes her feel most comfortable in the moment; a husband for life’s serious moments and a maybe-more-than-friend for the rest. And there’s a quiet sadness to Simon, who would rather accept a half-life of happiness than let go of the woman he loves from afar.
That Simon and Laura are at least somewhat self-aware of those flaws only adds to their bittersweet relationship. Director William Bridges (the “USS Callister” writer who, before co-writing this script with Goldstein, made the similarly-premised anthology series Soulmates with him) has a keen eye for the details of human behavior, both in the film’s goofier rom-com moments and its more serious drama. While a few scenes veer a touch too far into repetitive melodrama, All Of You is elevated by the tremendous chemistry between two actors who are allowed to be a little thornier and less likable than your average romance leads.
That means All Of You doesn’t just offer a will-they-won’t-they for Simon and Laura, but serves up one for its audience too. It’s hard to decide whether to root for them to be together or to let each other go; both choices seem impossible and necessary in equal measure. It’s an appreciably adult dilemma for an appreciably adult drama. As with so many great onscreen romances, it’s not that All Of You is doing something that’s never been done before, just that it’s doing it really well, with a great pair of actors at its center.
Director: William Bridges
Writer: William Bridges, Brett Goldstein
Starring: Brett Goldstein, Imogen Poots, Zawe Ashton, Steven Cree, Jenna Coleman
Release Date: September 26, 2025 (Apple TV+)
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