About Fate (2022)
Directed by Maryus Vaysberg
No — About Fate is not woke, scoring 8 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
About Fate arrives as a remake of the 1976 Soviet television film The Irony of Fate, though the American version strips out the vodka-soaked melancholy and keeps the premise: two strangers with near-identical addresses, a mix-up with keys, a naked man in the wrong bed.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is predominantly white with a few minority actors (Lewis Tan, Fikile Mthwalo) in supporting roles, cast naturally without any commentary on their identity.
A conventional rom-com with a female lead who has a career, but no feminist argument or gender-politics subtext is advanced.
No LGBTQ+ characters or themes appear anywhere in the film.
Race is never a subject of the film; minority characters exist without any racial consciousness or commentary.
No environmental or climate themes whatsoever.
The Instagram-influencer girlfriend is gently mocked, but the film offers no critique of wealth, class, or capitalism.
No body-positivity themes or messaging present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes.
A straightforward romantic comedy remake with no historical revisionism.
A fluffy, lightweight rom-com that makes no attempt to lecture or moralize to its audience.
Why it received this score
About Fate arrives as a remake of the 1976 Soviet television film The Irony of Fate, though the American version strips out the vodka-soaked melancholy and keeps the premise: two strangers with near-identical addresses, a mix-up with keys, a naked man in the wrong bed. Emma Roberts plays a realtor. Thomas Mann plays a lawyer. They bicker, they attend a wedding under false pretenses, they discover a shared destiny. The machinery is competent. The jokes are mild. Mila Kunis reportedly turned down the lead because the project was too fluffy, which remains the most incisive piece of criticism the film has yet attracted.
The cultural inventory here is thin. The cast is largely white, with Lewis Tan and Fikile Mthwalo appearing in supporting roles that make no comment on their identities. Race is not a subject. Neither is climate, nor class, nor the body, nor the mind's varied wiring. The film glances at an Instagram influencer girlfriend, gives her a light ribbing, then moves on without any argument about wealth or status. The female lead has a job and a wedding to attend, which is as close as the screenplay comes to a statement about women, and it is not really a statement at all. No character lectures. No thesis is advanced. The audience is trusted to watch two attractive people fall in love and nothing more.
This is, in the current climate, almost exotic. A romantic comedy that wants only to be a romantic comedy, carrying its era's social preoccupations the way a coat carries lint, which is to say barely and without intent. We are left with a film of remarkable cultural stillness. It will offend no one, enlighten no one, and be forgotten by most. There is something restful in that.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Two strangers believe in love but never seem to be able to find its true meaning. In a wild twist of events, fate puts each in the other's path on one stormy New Year's Eve.
Questions about About Fate
Is About Fate woke?
No — About Fate is not woke, scoring 8 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does About Fate have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 15.
How does About Fate compare to other 2022 movies?
It ranks #169 of the 223 films from 2022 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Bros (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.