ABC Family's My Future Boyfriend: What If Love Didn't Exist?

You've heard of star-crossed love, but what about time-crossed love? In the ABC Family Movie My Future Boyfriend, a writer meets a man who just might be The One, except for one little problem: He's a time traveler from the 32nd century.

The story begins when two 32nd Century explorers unearth buried treasure from what was once the Pacific Ocean. One container includes a large amount of cash and a romance novel titled Forbidden Love by someone named Elizabeth Barrett (played by Sara Rue). P-A-X-497/341 (Barry Watson), known as Pax for the rest of the movie, starts rifling through the artifacts. As he flips through the book, he sees foreign words—love, passion, and sex—that pique his curiosity. He asks an elder scientist called Bob (Fred Willard) about their meaning and doesn't get any answers. Just like poverty, violence, and first names, love has been removed from this future society.

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When Pax expresses a desire to find out more, Bob will only say love made bad things happen in past civilizations. It was like a virus. Undaunted, Pax sets out to travel more than 1,000 years back to 2011 when the romance novel was published. He wants to learn about love from Elizabeth Barrett herself. Bob gives Pax a deadline for return and wishes him luck.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is living the dream in 2011. By day, she works as a writer at a tabloid magazine called Strange Times. But her proudest achievement is her first published romance novel. She happily passes out the book to co-workers and mentions to a close co-worker that she found out her boyfriend is planning a surprise wedding proposal. 7 Ways To Tell If He Plans To Marry You

We don't know much about her partner, except that Elizabeth gushes about his qualities like she's checking off items on a grocery list. He's handsome, kind, and successful.  Elizabeth's co-workers point out that she makes no mention of her love for him, but she dismisses their concerns. She may enjoy writing about ideal love, but that doesn't mean she expects it for herself.

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I'll be the first to say that, for the most part, romance and science fiction shouldn't mix. It's just too cheesy. My Future Boyfriend isn't the stuff of great romantic depth—or, really, any depth—but it does make a point about the disparity between what we believe love should be and what we actually accept. Many of us have notions of what we want in a relationship, but we settle for the best knockoff version. And maybe, like Elizabeth, we do this because it's easier than being alone and working to find truer love. To Settle Or Not To Settle?

Hmm... Dare I say that a time traveler who knows nothing of love might teach Elizabeth, a romance "expert" a thing or two? You totally saw that coming, and you can watch it all go down this Sunday at 8/7 central on ABC Family.