Amazon Prime Video: After an astrologer predicts that Pia will find her soulmate among her next five dates, her friends and family choose men for her to date in hopes that she'll find love.

Release date March 6, 2025

The MPAA rated Picture This 16+ (Amazon) for substance use, alcohol use, foul language, and sexual content

Run Time: 101 minutes

Pia (Simone Ashley) is a gifted photographer, but bitter experience teaches her that talent isn’t always rewarded. Along with her “gay best friend”, Jay (Luke Fetherston), she runs a photography studio that is inexorably sliding into the red. Unless she can boost the studio’s business, she’s going to lose everything.

As Pia frets about her career, her mother, Laxmi (Sindhu Vee) worries that her 29-year-old daughter remains unwed. But Laxmi is nothing if not resourceful. At the engagement party of her other daughter, Sonal (Anoushka Chadha), Laxmi engages an astrologer (Kulvinder Ghir) to do readings for both girls. After studying their fates, the astrologer informs Pia that she will go on dates with five men before her sister’s wedding and one of those men will be her soulmate. Excited by the prediction, Pia’s friends and family agree that they will each choose one date for Pia, convinced that they will help her find her true love. Pia reluctantly agrees and embarks on the dates set up for her. Will she fall for the entitled nepo baby (Asim Chaudhry), the anxious guy with mommy issues (Nikesh Patel), the flaky yoga instructor (Phil Dunster) – or will her school crush (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) sweep in and touch her heart?

If this précis sounds familiar and the ending foreordained, you have undoubtedly watched Five Blind Dates, the Amazon movie from which this film is adapted. “Adapted” is a generous term: Picture This is almost a total copy of the Australian 2024 production. There are a few differences: Picture This is set in England and most of the cast are Indian instead of Chinese; Pia is a photographer instead of a tea connoisseur; and she’s also less obnoxious. The big pluses that come with this year’s remake are better acting and superior production design. Frankly, any movie that centers around an Indian wedding has a big advantage in supercharging colorful, exciting drama. Picture This wisely foregrounds plenty of the events surrounding Sonal’s wedding along with Pia’s very twee studio for a graphically interesting film.

On the downside, this remake amps up the profanity, with a half dozen sexual expletives and frequent terms of deity. There are also repeated scenes of alcohol consumption and an attempt at marijuana use that is only accidentally prevented. Throw in frequent crude sexual conversations, and this is not a film for family viewing.

It’s unfortunate that Amazon Studios didn’t choose to clean up this film during the adaptation or find an actor who has more chemistry with Pia than does Hero Fiennes Tiffin’s Charlie. I’ll confess that I haven’t forgiven Mr. Tiffin for his performance in all five of the ghastly After films, and it’s possible that my visceral dislike has affected my evaluation of him in this movie. Nonetheless, Amazon had the chance to turn a mediocre film into a good one and chose instead to turn it into a better-looking mediocre film. What a waste.

Directed by Prarthana Mohan. Starring Simone Ashley, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Sindhu Vee, Luke Fetherston. Running time: 101 minutes. Theatrical release March 6, 2025. Updated March 6, 2025

Picture This is rated 16+ (Amazon) by the MPAA for substance use, alcohol use, foul language, and sexual content

Violence:   There’s mention of a woman stabbing a man with a used epi-pen: he is unharmed. A man jokes that he’d be willing to “stab a baby in the throat” to get what he wants. A woman’s hair accidentally catches on fire. A mother grabs her adult daughter by the ear and twists it painfully.
Sexual Content:   There’s mention of a man’s genital when he urinates in public but there is no on-screen nudity. There are several scenes of men and women kissing, sometimes passionately. There is some detailed conversation about group and gay sex.
Profanity: The script contains over three dozen profanities, including a half dozen sexual expletives, eight scatological curses, 17 terms of deity, a minor profanity, and repeated uses of crude terms for sexual anatomy.
Alcohol / Drug Use:   There are frequent scenes of adults drinking alcohol at social events. Two main characters prepare to smoke marijuana before being interrupted.

Page last updated March 6, 2025