SPF-18

SPF-18 is a bad movie but not bad in the same way Fast and the Furious; Geostorm or any other mainstream movie is bad, it's bad almost exclusively because making movies is hard and this is the first movie Alex Israel has made.

In fact, I almost feel empathetic toward Alex Israel, the film now hitting Netflix is going to result in a barrage of negative reviews and some really amazing negative reviews like the one above mine. We might even see this movie join the ranks of "Troll 2" or any other "so bad it's good movie." Yet, when I watched this movie it had a strangely positive effect on me. I think this is because I watched SPF-18 while taking a break editing my own short movie. In fact, it was exactly after I had finished the first cut of my movie and felt nauseous after seeing how unwatchable it was. Taking a break watching a "nice" movie - I thought - might make it easier to edit and distract me from the the reality of what I had made. Instead what I watched was SPF-18.

During the movie there was a lot going on in my brain, the first scene played with the main character doing a type of Vlog or whatever and I thought the movie was shaping up to be interesting. Then the film proper started. I noticed the bad acting first, as it's the most noticeable, and to begin with I considered stopping the movie - but instead I continued watching it. As the movie played, I started just feeling bad for Alex Israel. I thought of what went into making my own movie; how hard it was trying to find good actors; how long it took to film; how high the hopes we had going in were and how mediocre and quite frankly unwatchable the results were. All this while watching the cringe delivery of lines frankensteined together with drone footage made me imagine Alex Israel on set trying to explain each character's motivation in the hot sun, when probably he was unsure himself; the millions of takes it took to get a shot of a Jeep turning off the road that was ultimately for a scene that turned out to be so unnecessary i'm surprised it even came up as an idea. But most of what I was thinking is that Alex Israel knows SPF-18 isn't good, just like I know the movie I'm currently editing isn't good. Not only that, anyone watching the final cut of SPF-18 knows it's not good. The actors, the grip and Pamela Anderson doing her completely necessary cameo - they all know it's bad.

And yet here we are watching this movie on Netflix. This is certainly not what Alex Israel imagined in his brain when thinking of the movie and I can feel that deep deep deep down the movie has some goodness in it. If the script had better dialogue, if the acting was better we might have been watching something like Garden State, instead of what the film now is. But that's not what happened and this is what we are ultimately left to judge the movie by. What we are left with, while probably not what Alex Israel wanted, had a profoundly positive effect on me. As soon as SPF-18 was over I went back to editing feeling invigorated, for one reason alone: However bad my movie was, it wasn't going to be SPF-18 bad. I felt permission to suck. To a further extent, I, like Alex Israel, am going to make tons of bad movies before I make a good one. This is ultimately why making movies or choosing any creative pursuit is hard. Not because it's hard to technically make the film - though that too - but rather because it's hard to make bad things when you know that they are bad during the production of the bad thing. The slow and tortuous dynamic of making something bad and then getting a little bit better and then making something bad again but being a little bit better is how art works. You only get better by sharing it with the world. While there are certainly savants who have made perfect movies on their first try - that is not an accurate picture of how ordinary art is made. David Bayles and Ted Orland highlight this extremely well in their book "Art and Fear." Ordinary art is a skill that you get better at by getting humiliated most of the time. This message of "Art and Fear" and others like it, is hard to remember on it's own and it certainly is easier to remember when you are in between projects and harder to convince yourself of in the process of them. But to me SPF-18 provides the perfect reminder of "Art and Fear", "The War of Art" and others like them. Pressfield puts it best in this single sentence:

"It's better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot."

SPF-18 is exactly what Pressfield meant by that line. Being in the arena is not pretty, but it's worth it, because eventually; after getting knocked down enough times you will have made something worth making.

I look forward to Alex Israel's next movie because I know that it will be better than this and, perhaps, in a couple years we might be looking back on Israel as a talented director.

In the meantime I'm going to get back to editing my movie and perhaps, in the future sometime, watch SPF-18 and read this review again - when I need reminding of this message and how crucial it is to any creative endeavour.

I'm pretty sure this movie was written by a 13 year old girl with rich parents who could bank roll the entire thing. The parents must have some horrible dirt on Keanu, Goldie Hawn and Rosanna Arquette in order to get them to be in this huge pile of garbage. The whole thing made me angry and I don't even know who to be most angry at the writers, director or the poor unfortunate souls who had to perform in this train wreck.

This must have been one of the worst... "things" I have seen in a long time. Calling it a movie would even be offensive to a really bad movie.

First of all the weird voice over sounds like someone forced their mom to read lines they had come with 2 minutes earlier, which would actually in a way be a good thing because it would be the ONLY logical explanation to why she makes everything sound so painfully awkward. And I just cannot NOT address the fact that Molly Ringwald plays the mom, I mean I have seen desperation amongst once famous actors but she has just taken the crown. Not to mention that the script is so bad it makes you wanna rip your hair out. Overall SPF-18 looks like it could have easily been made by middle schoolers and the fact that anyone would call this piece of crap an actual movie hurts my intelligence.

Since this catastrophic piece of "film making" was Alex Israel's directorial debut I'm guessing we wont be seeing cinematic masterpieces from him any time soon. Goes to show that getting a bunch of fairly good looking yet extremely mediocre actors and placing them in a luxurious environment does not necessarily make a good movie, or you know, in this case a movie at all.

I watched this movie just to see Noah Centineo's perfect face and beautiful eyes but I was then met with the worst movie to ever exist. First of all the movie made no sense, there was like 6 different plot lines and I truly didn't understand any of the relationships. The acting sucked and the only good thing was the view of the beach. Also the movie just made no sense all around and I would NEVER recommend this to a friend, this movie should just be deleted from everywhere. However I still love you Noah.

Yes the movie was bad, maybe some of these comments are a bit exaggerated, but the movie wasn't great.. let's be real. I'm snowed In, it's 2am , I need a good movie to watch. And this movie pops up in my recommendations every day.! So I was like oh what the heck noah's Cute ass is on the movie cover. Why not .? The movie starts ... the intro is already very long... unecessary. Fast forward the movie proceeds. The acting wasn't great. BUT.!!! We CANNOT blame the actors . Apart from this movie , these actors and actresses have acted in different projects .. and they were great. They were amazing.. Noah and Bianca .. both acted on the hit tv show "The Fosters" . They were great. So maybe it wasn't the acting . These actors and actresses were not exposed to their full potential, the script was CRINGE within itself . You know when you look really good, and you know you look good, but in order to take a good picture , Of course you need a good angle . You can't simply just take a good picture at a really bad angle with trash lighting, with your double chin exposed, and your face overshadowed. The whole movie was just a bad angle for these young actors. The script ,the plot, the wardrobe, the camera work. Everything .