June and John

"June and John" is an anarchic fable disguised as a love story, a small bomb thrown into the heart of post-industrial bourgeois, politically correct values. Watching it feels like being pulled by the hand into a dream where the rules of work, family, legality-even sanity-begin to dissolve, and what remains is a raw, poetic urge for freedom.

June isn't just a character; she's a spark-wild, intuitive, dangerously alive. John, her opposite, starts as a prisoner of routine, almost a parody of the modern man: alienated, passive, half-asleep. Their encounter is explosive. They don't "fall in love" in any traditional sense-they ignite, and with them, the film burns down the empty temples of productivity, respectability, and all the tired ideals of a society obsessed with stability.

There's something utopian and childish in their rebellion, as if they were trying to live a life no one dares to even imagine anymore. It's not about crime or politics-it's about refusing to live according to someone else's script. The film doesn't preach, but it seduces you into wondering what would happen if you stopped obeying.

More than a story, June and John is a provocation: gentle, surreal, but with teeth. It reminded me that under the skin of our neatly arranged lives, something wild and urgent still pulses. Not everything in it works, but maybe that's the point. It's a mess you don't want to clean up.

The "manic pixie dream girl" trope has been dissected to death, and I get it. But I'm not one of those people. I actually love the trope when it's handled with care and creativity. We've probably seen hundreds of films that play with some variation of it. Some are good, some are great, and some are downright terrible.

This film falls squarely in the terrible category.

Nothing works here. The acting is wooden, the story is painfully bland, and the direction is as uninspired as the atrocious dialogue. It feels like a soulless attempt to cash in on a trope without understanding what makes it compelling in the first place.

Compare this to Marmalade (2024), which came out just last year. That film completely reinvented the trope, giving it a fresh, meaningful twist that actually made it interesting again. This one? It's just a lazy mess.

I read the title from song review once and it stuck to my mind. Now it's appropriate time to use it. The June character reminds me of Leeloo from 5th Element and theme is similar "love conquers all". Luc Besson wrote 5th Element as a teenager. I don't know when he wrote this story but it certainly feels like a work of teenager. Perhaps I'm just too old but this is very juvenile and unoriginal fairy-tale full of cliches.

The biggest problem however is that it does not really touch or raise any emotions other than cringe. I don't know if it works better when you are teenager watching it with your first date. I was just left wondering did teenage-Luc have some real-life free spirited girl he adored from distance and later used in this Leeloo / June character?

A really enjoyable, delightful movie, it was so refreshing to watch it. It's so typical of today's world that everybody finds something to criticise, to have a negative opinion on things. If there's an action movie, it's a problem that everybody is fighting, shooting, not getting hurt. If there's a romantic movie, it's full of unrealistic cliches. There's this movie, you will miss the sanity, the seriousness from it. But why? You should accept movies for what they are. This is an insane, funny, lovely story for an easy, light entertainment. And it also has a hidden message, you just have to find it. But don't think too hard, just sit down, relax and enjoy it.

I usually don't write reviews.

But I wanted to say: Please don't make movies for the big screen when you can't afford proper camera equipment or post production.

This movie looks like it's recorded with a cellphone from the 2010s. I don't care if that's intended, its just painful to watch on anything bigger than an iPhone.

Despite this the plot is okayish, but nothing special: Immature boys dream comes true, with enough flex to make it appropriate for love story seeking women... It had it's funny moments which brought me over the time. If the "visual style" would have been a little more on my side of expectations for a professional movie I would rather give it 5 to 6 stars.