Utterly shocked by the lack of praise for this small gem
TL;DR: If you've loved The Fault in Our Stars and the sorts, you can't miss this; if you (like myself) hated it, you should still give this one a chance - you might be pleasantly surprised.
Whenever I finish a movie, the first thing I do is to check online for reviews; I like to see other people's opinion about it, wheter they agree with mine or not. It makes for an enriching experience.
So imagine my surprise when, coming here after watching this movie, I found out that not only there's not a single review about it, but also so few people have seen (the vote count as I'm writing is only at 177)! I mean, really? This is by no means a B movie (which usually have ten times as many ratings), and it's already been three days since it was released. For such a delightfully charming one, it's too much of an injustice, so here's my attempt to repair that a tiny bit.
Watching the trailer you might be tricked into thinking this is a silly YA rom-com, and sure enought I begins that way. But it soon goes from silly to charming, from charming to heartbreaking... don't get me wrong, at its heart this is still very much a YA rom-com, with all of it's clichés and pitfalls, nothing groundbreaking. But the way it blend those with some more dense elements (one of them being almost too somber) feels so right that you can't help but be captured by it; I've mentioned The Fault in Our Stars at the beginning, but in this sense it's much more akin to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
A lot of it goes to the impeccable production and cast. Both protagonists (Flynn and Telles) are so natural that they manage to somehow hoover above you're average in-love teen couple. The supporting characters are also on spot, including some hilarious ones having little to no lines at all. But what impressed me the most was the special care given to the cinematography, which leverages the movie concept to create some really eye-caching close-ups. All of this combined with a lot of funny references to '90s nerd culture. Considering that this is the first feature film of director Kellen Moore, it's even more impressive.
Of all of those tragic-teen-romance movies that have become a genre in and of itself, this is the only one that I've actually enjoyed. Give it a try - even if you don't like it as much, I think you'll agree that it deserves a LOT more attention than it's getting.
Whenever I finish a movie, the first thing I do is to check online for reviews; I like to see other people's opinion about it, wheter they agree with mine or not. It makes for an enriching experience.
So imagine my surprise when, coming here after watching this movie, I found out that not only there's not a single review about it, but also so few people have seen (the vote count as I'm writing is only at 177)! I mean, really? This is by no means a B movie (which usually have ten times as many ratings), and it's already been three days since it was released. For such a delightfully charming one, it's too much of an injustice, so here's my attempt to repair that a tiny bit.
Watching the trailer you might be tricked into thinking this is a silly YA rom-com, and sure enought I begins that way. But it soon goes from silly to charming, from charming to heartbreaking... don't get me wrong, at its heart this is still very much a YA rom-com, with all of it's clichés and pitfalls, nothing groundbreaking. But the way it blend those with some more dense elements (one of them being almost too somber) feels so right that you can't help but be captured by it; I've mentioned The Fault in Our Stars at the beginning, but in this sense it's much more akin to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.
A lot of it goes to the impeccable production and cast. Both protagonists (Flynn and Telles) are so natural that they manage to somehow hoover above you're average in-love teen couple. The supporting characters are also on spot, including some hilarious ones having little to no lines at all. But what impressed me the most was the special care given to the cinematography, which leverages the movie concept to create some really eye-caching close-ups. All of this combined with a lot of funny references to '90s nerd culture. Considering that this is the first feature film of director Kellen Moore, it's even more impressive.
Of all of those tragic-teen-romance movies that have become a genre in and of itself, this is the only one that I've actually enjoyed. Give it a try - even if you don't like it as much, I think you'll agree that it deserves a LOT more attention than it's getting.
- pieromori
- Jun 21, 2020