Directed by William Bridges | Written by Bridges and Brett Goldstein | 98 min | ▲▲▲ | Apple TV+

This might be the first film I’ve seen Goldstein in following the undeniable, inexorable Roy Kent from Ted Lasso, such an unforgettable character. I mean, he was here, he was there, he was every- fucking-where, right? Goldstein also writes and acts in the excellent show on Apple TV+, Shrinking. Now he’s in this ambitious romantic drama with a science-fiction twist, one that follows the When Harry Met Sally playbook of “Can Men and Women Be Friends?” but treating the question with a super-seriousness that works against any possible whimsy, which is a shame.

Goldstein is Simon, Imogen Poots is Laura, they’ve been friends since uni. It’s clear he holds a secret flame for her while she is just happy to be his friend. She decides to take a new test that will identify who her soulmate is, and it turns out to be a Scot named Lukas (Steven Cree). But this unresolved thing between Simon and Laura persists and, yes, gets complicated, despite the best efforts of science and marital vows.

It takes awhile to shake off the echoes of those other characters Goldstein plays, especially when he gets to be his typically hilarious self here, the witty chat show persona he always delivers to the cameras — this could’ve been a full on romcom and that might’ve been a good thing.

But by the middle act we begin to see his vulnerability, and what becomes clear is the movie is more a melodrama, the science fiction element with the test was never really required for the plot to work. We get moments between the leads that feel real and true, and a couple that feel overplayed. There’s definitely an argument to be made that by not showing us more of Laura’s life with her husband, the emotional landscape around her connection with Simon is underserved.

I’ve always believed that the best ending is the one that audiences don’t realize they want, but filmmakers  have seeded for them — I didn’t quite get that. But as my cinepanion remarked, what this is really about is fulfillment, and what fulfills Simon and what fulfills Laura are actually two different things. All Of You is aiming to map a small portion of the implacable vagaries of the heart, and it gets credit for the effort.