We're not the target demographic, 20 years or so older, so maybe if you're a teenager you'll get something just out of the style or vibe of the movie, but this movie felt empty to us.
And it's not like we have a problem with teen romances, we gave this a chance because we just watched 'To All the Boys I've Loved Before' and it gave us hope that teen rom-coms could be good. Only to have that optimism ground out of us by this do-nothing, lowest-common-denominator movie.
The main problem is that the script meanders about without much purpose for 70 minutes, then all of a sudden we finally get some dramatic tension at minute 70 and then it's resolved in about 10 minutes flat and then we wrap up the happily-ever-after.
As others have said, opening the movie with boy-meets-girl and they immediately have electricity is a mistake. We know nothing about these people and they're already falling in love? Any other movie would introduce each of them separately, give us something about them to relate to, have them be funny and self-deprecating and only then, when we care a bit about them have them meet, so we actually care if they get together and have opinions about the things they say about each other. We're so in the dark in this movie that anything one says about the other could be true or totally unfair (and that doesn't pay off later).
From there the relationship was completely predictable for 70 minutes. Things happened, obstacles were introduced and overcome, but we were never in doubt that they would be and we still weren't given that much reason to care if they weren't. The accident, by the way, seemed totally forced and random and irrelevant.
I will say that the climactic scene was reasonably fresh and a healthy perspective for a teen movie to deal with. But it came way too late. It should've happened at the halfway point and the resolution should've been spread out over the rest of the movie instead of being resolved with almost no conflict in a snappy 15 minutes.
Other ways this fails to be original or avoid stereotypes:
And it's not like we have a problem with teen romances, we gave this a chance because we just watched 'To All the Boys I've Loved Before' and it gave us hope that teen rom-coms could be good. Only to have that optimism ground out of us by this do-nothing, lowest-common-denominator movie.
The main problem is that the script meanders about without much purpose for 70 minutes, then all of a sudden we finally get some dramatic tension at minute 70 and then it's resolved in about 10 minutes flat and then we wrap up the happily-ever-after.
As others have said, opening the movie with boy-meets-girl and they immediately have electricity is a mistake. We know nothing about these people and they're already falling in love? Any other movie would introduce each of them separately, give us something about them to relate to, have them be funny and self-deprecating and only then, when we care a bit about them have them meet, so we actually care if they get together and have opinions about the things they say about each other. We're so in the dark in this movie that anything one says about the other could be true or totally unfair (and that doesn't pay off later).
From there the relationship was completely predictable for 70 minutes. Things happened, obstacles were introduced and overcome, but we were never in doubt that they would be and we still weren't given that much reason to care if they weren't. The accident, by the way, seemed totally forced and random and irrelevant.
I will say that the climactic scene was reasonably fresh and a healthy perspective for a teen movie to deal with. But it came way too late. It should've happened at the halfway point and the resolution should've been spread out over the rest of the movie instead of being resolved with almost no conflict in a snappy 15 minutes.
Other ways this fails to be original or avoid stereotypes:
- major manic pixie dream girl syndrome, she does collage and plays piano but she's sarcastic and fiesty and "alternative", but also blond and size 0, but we're meant to believe she's relatable because she gets 'a' pimple and talks about being on a first name basis with her dermatologist (?!).
- all the actors are cleancut white Disney teens out of a modelling agency, and if I'm not missing something, there's literally *one* black friend. And he's not even the best friend, he's the best friend's mostly silent sidekick.
- they constantly try to be self aware and talk about love story cliches before fulfilling them, but just in a rote "we're going to state this cliche before we use it" way with no wit or clever reversal or anything.
- the movie contains maybe half a dozen jokes. It could've gotten away with a lot more if it'd been funny. Most of the time it wasn't even trying.
- the male lead writes his longtime crush off in an instant because she can't articulately define a word. She knows the most common way it comes up but she couldn't use it in a sentence. No likeable character should be that judgemental.
- the whole thing feels like Dawson's Creek fan-fic (for those old enough to get the reference) but even worse than what was, in retrospect, a very pretentious and self-obsessed show.
- fails the Bechdel test - there are only two named female characters and the only time they talk to each other is to discuss the guy.
- I guess the most jarring thing is that for a movie that basically implies that the two leads are the only two intelligent people in town, this is a really dumb movie. Not funny, not clever, not diverse, no meaningful social commentary etc. Don't get me wrong, there are some great dumb movies, just - don't have your two love interests spend the whole of your dumb movie implicitly and then very explicitly judging everyone else for not being 'very smart'.