This isn’t a normal review a because it’s not about the film as a film but more a point of interest within it – but can say that although watched all the way through didn’t quite deliver. Face to face I can talk about them for hours but online I try to keep it brief. This is your average rom com with popular leading actors. Cameron Diaz playing one the leads in her bright smiley way (she is pleasant to watch). But the reason I bring up this film in a non review context is that there were three specific moments that perfectly showed what I think Hyperphantasia is or at least it gave a good visual representation of it. Which was actually quite handy as my husband has aphantasia so for him, he can’t ‘imagine’ what’s it’s like. This was a good way for him to actually ‘see’ what I had been trying to tell him about my sometimes seemingly neurotic brain.

The two examples that stick with me after the fact are –

She is trying to sleep, and the next day starts running through her head, almost causing a panic attack because it was so frantic and busy. I know this process well. And the second is when she is explaining to the potential love interest why it wouldn’t work out and runs through the entire scenario she has already worked out in her mind. These two things in particular were exactly what I do (although this movie wasn’t anything about hyperphantsia), and until I knew how my husband thought, I had believed everyone had this frantic level of thinking, planning and general on stop thoughts. I think I believed they just managed it better than me. It turns out on the whole not everyone does, but then there are those of us who do…

(c) K Wicks