The opening scene of Love Tactics 2 finds Aslı, played by Demet Özdemir, mid-rant about marriage being a scam. It’s a bold, unapologetic start, one that sets the tone for this sequel from director Recai Karagöz. Released on Netflix in July 2023, the film picks up where its 2022 predecessor, Love Tactics, left off, doubling down on the same romantic-comedy premise: Aslı’s boyfriend Kerem (Şükrü Özyıldız) unexpectedly agrees with her that marriage is a scam, forcing her to manipulate him into proposing anyway. On paper, it’s a setup built for a fast, sharp battle of wits between two leads who are supposed to be genuinely in love.

In practice, the film stumbles out of the gate. Aslı’s determination to get Kerem to propose, despite her professed contempt for marriage, never gains the emotional logic it needs to carry a full feature. Özdemir and Özyıldız slide back into the rapport they built in the first film with real ease, but their characters’ motivations are muddled from the start. Aslı’s anti-marriage stance plays less like a trait than like a plot device wheeled in to justify the scheming that follows, and Kerem’s willingness to go along with her games leaves him looking passive rather than a real match for her.

The production notes explain some of that thinness without excusing it. Announced by Lanistar Media for Netflix and written, like the original, by Pelin Karamehmetoğlu, Love Tactics 2 brought back its 2022 leads, Özdemir, Özyıldız and Atakan Çelik, and was shot in 2023 mainly on location in Istanbul. That city could have given the sequel a texture the first film lacked, but the camera rarely does more than park in front of it. Streets and interiors pass by as scenery; the visual storytelling itself stays static, with little sense that anyone behind the camera was looking for a shot rather than a location.

The ensemble is where the film earns its best moments. Çelik returns as Tuna, Bora Akkaş plays Emir, and Deniz Baydar’s Cansu rounds out the friend group that surrounds Aslı and Kerem; further down the cast, Hande Yılmaz’s Ezgi and Melisa Döngel’s Feride get less to do but still land a line or two. Together they give the group scenes a snap the central couple can’t always manage on their own, and it’s in these ensemble stretches, rather than in Aslı and Kerem’s one-on-one scheming, that the comedy actually lands.

Pacing is the other persistent problem. The film keeps reaching for one more romantic misadventure before the last one has had time to breathe, so the moments meant to land hardest, Aslı’s increasingly elaborate ploys, get rushed through instead of built up. Scenes cut away just as they should be settling in, and the effect is a story that feels assembled rather than shaped.

There are still flashes of real charm. In its lighter stretches, when Aslı and Kerem are simply talking to each other rather than executing a plan, the film finds a warmth that the plotting keeps getting in the way of. Those scenes are the clearest evidence of what Love Tactics 2 might have been with a tighter script, and they make the rest of the film’s contrivances more frustrating by comparison, not less.

Reception on release bore that out. Common Sense Media’s Barbara Shulgasser-Parker gave the film 2 out of 5, and The Envoy Web’s Anweshak Tejendra was only slightly more generous at 2.5 out of 5; both readings track with what’s on screen, a comedy with real affection for its cast that never quite trusts its own premise.

Love Tactics 2 is a mixed bag, and not a mysterious one: it’s held up by a supporting cast that clearly enjoys itself and by two leads whose rapport survived the jump from the first film, while its plot mechanics, its pacing and its flat visual sense drag against them. Fans of the original will find enough of what they came for. Anyone hoping for a sharper sequel will be waiting for a third installment to deliver it.