I thought this one was fun but a bit inconsequential (though not for the girl, obviously -- she has a lot of consequences coming her way). The direction in my mental cinema has it as Sunday morning rom-com fluff, and I can't see anyone other than a young John Cusack in it.
I also find that there's a law of diminishing returns with alternative universe details.
The Magnificent Ambersons: okay, that's a good way to lead us in, the footage is famously lost so finding it is a fun speculative twist.
I, Robot: already I'm guessing that the names "Harlan" and "Ellison" are going to feature before the end of the sentence, but still it's a favourite "what if?". But unless each difference is more surprising or thought-provoking than the last, the pony's one trick starts to get repetitive. You can't really win whether you keep to the (boring) known possibilities or reach for more extravagant revisions of history. The difficulty is that without constant reference to these little quirks the parallel universe quickly loses its texture and merges back into our own.
This time the author has a handy get-out in that his main character is a film geek: he's interested in
any differences, whether significant or otherwise, and it's enough just to list them all breathlessly and savour the possibilities, the fresh takes on old favourites or the rubbish turned into art. And the reversal of bringing Parallel Ally into Pete's world chasing
Citizen Kane just about buys the earlier stuff.
Anyway, I didn't intend to moan for so long. I was actually posting to say that I thought the reading was excellent. It really helped to sell me a story that otherwise seemed rather slight.
And I did enjoy it, honest.