‘Drive – The Pretenders’ Review: Does This Fake Engagement Have Real Staying Power?

Prime Video has spent the last few years stacking its shelves with glossy young adult romances, and ‘Drive – The Pretenders’ is the newest arrival. The German language film streams worldwide from October 28, 2026, and runs roughly 101 minutes under director Sergej Moya. It adapts Tamara Lush’s Wattpad novel ‘Drive’, and it is billed as the first Wattpad adaptation developed in Germany for a global audience.

The setup is pure romance engineering. Sarah Jenkins, a race car mechanic played by Lisa-Marie Koroll, agrees to pose as the fiancée of Dante Annunziata, a scandal prone racing star played by Amin Baahmed. Officially the arrangement is there to repair his reputation, but secretly Sarah hopes it will win her a chance behind the wheel.

It is the kind of premise that sells itself in a single sentence, and the production gives it a handsome frame. Bavaria Fiction made the film with Amazon MGM Studios Germany, the screenplay comes from Chris Silber and Malina Nwabuonwor, and the shoot took place around Prague. The cast also includes Gustav Schmidt, Mišel Matičević, Inka Friedrich and Jeanette Hain.

This is where I start to have trouble. Anyone who has watched a pretend couple drift into real feelings knows exactly where this road ends, and the film rarely bothers to surprise you along the way. Familiarity can be a comfort in romance, but it only works when the journey has texture, and here that texture arrives in patches.

Koroll and Baahmed are pleasant company, and Baahmed, in his first leading role, wears the swagger the part demands with real ease. Sarah begins as sharp, hungry and funny, yet the script keeps forcing her to weigh her ambitions against her feelings until the ambition fades into the wallpaper. Both leads carry family loss, which should deepen the bond between them, but those wounds are mentioned far more than they are felt.

The racing is the biggest missed opportunity. The cars look sleek, the photography is expensive looking, and the European locations give everything a polished sheen, yet the track mostly serves as scenery for the romance. The rivalry that a setting like this practically promises never really arrives, so the sport sits politely in the background while the couple does all the talking.

The pacing works against it too. Trouble between the pair shows up late and melts away fast, which leaves the closing stretch feeling hurried and a little weightless. Even so, the film moves along easily and never becomes a chore to sit through.

If I am honest, I enjoyed the company of the leads and the shiny surface more than I believed the story underneath. A thin conflict, a sidelined career thread and racing that never grips keep it from earning its big feelings, but it is a comfortable and good looking way to spend an evening. I give ‘Drive The Pretenders’ 6 out of 10.

So did the fake engagement win you over, or did you want far more speed and bite from this racing romance, so share in the comments whether you agree with my verdict on ‘Drive The Pretenders’.