It takes courage and ingenuity to find the modern romcom formula within the operas of Gluck, sung well through SMS by Heughan and Chopra Jonas. It also stars Celine Dion.

An old-school, straight-faced studio romance featuring five new songs from Ms. Dion, writer-director Jim Strouse’s Love Again is all about such healing — to the extent that if it were a book instead of a movie, it would be filed in the self-help section.

Whatever the movie’s sporadic charms, it’s simply too small for Celine, who can only be matched by a drama with the sweep and scale of Titanic.

Yes, most of the laugh lines in Love Again are stale enough that even just hearing them kind of hurts your teeth, but for all of its blatant ridiculousness, this movie seldom tries to be funny.

Love Again, by ceding some space to the Queen of Feelings, has moments that play. I can’t say it was good, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

I’m not going to say the ridiculous and off-putting romantic text-message dramedy “Love Again” is the worst movie of the year, but it might be the most implausible film I’ve seen so far in 2023, and I’m not necessarily excluding “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Cocaine Bear” and “65” from the competition.

It misses the painful performance of everyday life, or less Hallmark-friendly emotions, like anger or numbness.

This is after all a romantic comedy, not a romantic tragedy, though you might not realize it since it’s almost devoid of humor.

It’s not much to examine at length, much less remember, but if you’re in the mood for a Hallmark card to revive your faith in gooey rom-coms, Love Again is not the one.

The film is nothing but a chintzy promotional tool for Celine Dion.