Metacritic reviews

This super-cheap Netflix Original is so determined to satisfy the algorithm that it would lack any coherent sense of self if not for the fact that it was chiefly designed as a star vehicle for Disney Channel grad Sofia Carson — but there’s something rather stubbornly honest about the heartbeat of desperation that thrums below its Walmart veneer.

Purple Hearts is crushingly predictable and never quite rings true, but it’s not completely hopeless.

It is easy to see the potential in the first act, but Purple Hearts leans too much into over-sentimentality, with narrative tricks designed to trigger tears and subdue thinking.

The film wallows in contrived plots and subplots, made worse by the dearth of chemistry between the two leads.

This glossy but gloopy Netflix original is primarily out to serve its leading lady’s legions of fans, some of them perhaps young enough not to have seen it all before.

Purple Hearts would be a lot more interesting if it interrogated the specific moments of weakness that attract Cassie to Luke, but that’s far too complex an idea to explore in this kiddie pool of sentimentality.