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15 Movie Couples Who Had No Chemistry

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Nazarii Verbitskiy

Entertainment - August 26th 2026, 22:00 GMT+2

15. Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal – Materialists (2025)

Harry is Lucy’s dream client made flesh: wealthy, polished, attentive and so impeccably presented that even his apartment seems emotionally available. Yet Johnson and Pascal play their dates in *Materialists* with the immaculate calm of two people comparing retirement plans. Pascal supplies warmth, but Johnson keeps Lucy guarded enough that Harry never feels like a genuine temptation beside Chris Evans’s messier John. The coolness serves Celine Song’s point about compatibility becoming a calculation, though it also makes the love triangle unusually easy to solve. | © A24

Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum Jupiter Ascending 2015 — 14. Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum – Jupiter Ascending (2015)

*Jupiter Ascending* asks us to accept reincarnated space royalty, gravity boots and Eddie Redmayne communicating exclusively through whispers and screams, but its hardest sell is Jupiter and Caine’s romance. Kunis plays her as bewildered yet earnest; Tatum hides behind prosthetic ears, a permanent scowl and the emotional availability of a guard dog. He repeatedly rescues her, she abruptly falls for him, and the screenplay mistakes proximity for desire. Even the infamous declaration about loving dogs cannot disguise two attractive actors generating all the heat of an intergalactic bus ride. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Gigli 2003 1 — 13. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez – Gigli (2003)

Bennifer’s real-life attraction was swallowing tabloids while *Gigli* somehow captured none of it. Affleck’s Larry and Lopez’s Ricki bicker without rhythm, then stumble toward a romance the screenplay has not remotely earned—especially after establishing that Ricki is a lesbian. Their flirtation feels imposed by the movie’s commercial priorities rather than discovered between its characters. The performers look comfortable beside each other, but comfort is not electricity; this plays less like two mob operatives unexpectedly falling in love than two famous people waiting for the film around them to improve. | © Columbia Pictures

12. Emma Watson and Rupert Grint – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

Ron and Hermione spent eight films inching toward a kiss, which should have made their Chamber of Secrets encounter feel explosive. Instead, Watson and Grint collide after destroying a Horcrux with the nervous commitment of classmates completing a group assignment. Both actors had spoken about seeing each other as siblings and finding the kiss deeply awkward, and that history is visible in the finished moment. Their comic friendship remains warm and believable; the trouble begins whenever *Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2* asks that friendship to become physical passion. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cameron Diaz and Leonardo Di Caprio — 11. Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio – Gangs of New York (2002)

Daniel Day-Lewis’s Bill the Butcher walks away with nearly every volt in *Gangs of New York*, leaving precious little for Amsterdam and Jenny. DiCaprio plays a man consumed by revenge, while Diaz’s pickpocket is busy surviving her complicated ties to Bill; together, they appear to be exchanging plot information rather than falling in love. The betrayals, rescues and jealous confrontations are all present, but the pulse beneath them is missing. Scorsese built the Five Points from scratch, yet this romance still feels as though it was imported from another film. | © Miramax Films

10. Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth – Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

A kiss from the Huntsman literally awakens Snow White, a responsibility normally reserved for true love and industrial-strength setup. Unfortunately, *Snow White and the Huntsman* keeps Stewart and Hemsworth too busy running, fighting or mourning Eric’s late wife to develop an actual romance. Her severe stillness and his weary charm occupy adjacent emotional climates. The Huntsman’s bedside speech is moving on its own, but the film has not earned what his kiss accomplishes; magic appears largely because the screenplay seems to have misplaced the courtship. | © Universal Pictures

Dane De Haan and Cara Delevingne Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets 2017 1 — 9. Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne – Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Luc Besson fills *Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets* with shape-shifters, pearl-skinned aliens and a space station large enough to contain entire civilizations. What he cannot locate is a believable reason for Valerian and Laureline to marry. DeHaan delivers the supposedly legendary playboy with sleepy detachment, while Delevingne meets his proposals with the exhausted patience of a colleague answering the same email again. Their banter has no bounce, their rescues create no longing, and the final kiss feels less like romantic payoff than another box the mission required them to check. | © EuropaCorp

8. Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan – Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

An erotic drama can survive rope, contracts and an alarming amount of hardware; it cannot survive leads who appear to lower the room temperature whenever they touch. Johnson finds flashes of dry humor in Anastasia, while Dornan plays Christian with such controlled stiffness that they rarely develop a shared rhythm. Even the Red Room encounters in *Fifty Shades of Grey* feel less seductive than carefully supervised product demonstrations. For a story sold entirely on irresistible attraction, the actors leave Beyoncé doing most of the heavy breathing. | © Universal Pictures

7. Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte – I Love Trouble (1994)

Screwball romance depends on hostility with pleasure hiding underneath it. Roberts and Nolte supply plenty of hostility in *I Love Trouble*, but little evidence that rival reporters Sabrina and Peter enjoy sparring—or occupying the same room. Their real off-screen dislike later became public, and the strain matches what appears on camera: jokes land like accusations, flirtation becomes another contest and kisses resemble contractual settlements. The train-derailment conspiracy may be needlessly complicated, but it remains easier to believe than these two suddenly deciding they cannot live apart. | © Touchstone Pictures

Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney Terminator Genisys 2015 — 6. Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney – Terminator Genisys (2015)

The original *Terminator* made Sarah and Kyle’s rushed romance believable through desperation, tenderness and two people clinging to each other at the end of the world. *Terminator Genisys* inherits that destiny but drains away the urgency. Clarke’s battle-ready Sarah already knows Kyle is supposed to father her son, while Courtney arrives with the square-jawed energy of a replacement action figure. They bicker about timelines without generating attraction, leaving Arnold Schwarzenegger’s protective machine to share a warmer bond with Sarah than her predetermined soulmate ever manages. | © Paramount Pictures

Leonardo Di Caprio and Carey Mulligan — 5. Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan – The Great Gatsby (2013)

Gatsby does not love Daisy so much as an immaculate version of her preserved in his imagination, and the film’s emotional distance can be defended on those terms. Still, *The Great Gatsby* asks audiences to believe that this fixation generated a mansion, a fortune and years of impossible hope. DiCaprio delivers the obsession; Mulligan supplies Daisy’s unease. What they rarely produce together is mutual heat. Their reunion at Nick’s cottage is charmingly nervous, but afterward even champagne, fireworks and Lana Del Rey cannot turn longing into chemistry. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

4. Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko – To the Wonder (2012)

Terrence Malick photographs Neil and Marina spinning through fields, supermarket aisles and Mont Saint-Michel as though constant motion might generate intimacy. Kurylenko reaches outward with her entire body in *To the Wonder*; Affleck remains sealed off, offering so little that their relationship resembles a memory of romance rather than one being lived. Since the film follows love curdling into estrangement, some disconnection is intentional. The problem is that its opening bliss never feels tactile enough to make the later collapse hurt as deeply as Malick’s images insist it should. | © Magnolia Pictures

3. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper – Serena (2014)

Reuniting Lawrence and Cooper after *Silver Linings Playbook* should have been the safest decision in *Serena*. Instead, their proven rhythm turns to timber as George and Serena Pemberton build a logging empire while their marriage unravels through infertility, jealousy and violence. The plot races through emotional disasters before either actor can establish the relationship beneath them, making every betrayal feel scheduled rather than devastating. They still look like movie stars together; they simply perform this particular romance on parallel tracks, with misery serving as their only dependable scene partner. | © Magnolia Pictures

2. Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie – The Tourist (2010)

Venice is doing all the flirting in *The Tourist*. Jolie’s Elise selects Depp’s Frank on a train to serve as a decoy, and the contrast could have sparked a playful caper: she glides through every room while he stumbles after her in bewilderment. Instead, their performances never settle on the same comic frequency. The revelation that Frank is actually Alexander Pearce demands retroactive romantic logic, but only makes the earlier blankness stranger. Two famously magnetic stars somehow share the atmosphere of a luxury perfume advertisement filmed after everyone went home. | © Columbia Pictures

1. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman – Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)

The fall of the Jedi rests partly on believing Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala would risk everything for each other. Christensen delivers yearning as nervous intensity; Portman answers with senatorial composure, while George Lucas surrounds them with waterfalls, fireplaces and an aggressively romantic meadow. None of it repairs the stiff courtship in *Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones*. When Padmé declares her love before the arena battle, it plays less like revelation than plot instruction. A galaxy-altering romance should never feel this much like mandatory prequel paperwork. | © Lucasfilm

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Romance can survive terrible dialogue, ridiculous plot twists and even a last-minute sprint through an airport, but it cannot survive a missing spark. These movie couples were supposed to sell grand passion, forbidden desire or lifelong devotion; instead, they often looked like coworkers trapped in an unusually long team-building exercise. From miscast blockbusters to famous romantic pairings that simply never clicked, these 15 on-screen couples made every kiss feel contractual.

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Romance can survive terrible dialogue, ridiculous plot twists and even a last-minute sprint through an airport, but it cannot survive a missing spark. These movie couples were supposed to sell grand passion, forbidden desire or lifelong devotion; instead, they often looked like coworkers trapped in an unusually long team-building exercise. From miscast blockbusters to famous romantic pairings that simply never clicked, these 15 on-screen couples made every kiss feel contractual.