Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Current Film Reviews- Let It Snow

Alright, I got nothing for November, anxiety has wreaked havoc on my life, and the month's almost over, so I need something to make sure I follow through on my personal promise to release something each month. *Looks on Netflix*. Oh, hey, they finally made that film based on that book John Green co-wrote. Alright, some backstory. I first heard about this around the time The Fault in Our Stars came out, and I became intrigued by John Green and the particular genre he worked in. This project was in development, and I thought I would see it in 2015, when I read it. Well, it's four years later, and I've stopped caring, and as far as I can discern, no one has noticed that this came out, so.... screw it. I got nothing else to write about.

    Based on the novel of the same name co-written by Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle, the film follows several plot threads that weave and intersect with each other at various points. You have the story of Julie Reyes (Isabelle Merced), who meets the pop star Stuart Bale (Shameik Moore), and shares a fairly good experience with him, despite her own problems at home. There's Dorrie (Liv Hewson), a waitress who's nervous because Kerry (Anna Akana), who she has a burgeoning relationship with, seems not to be interested when she and her group of cheerleaders head into the restaurant Dorrie works at. There's Dorrie's friends Addie (Odeya Rush), who is concerned that her boyfriend Jeb (Mason Gooding) is cheating on her (not to mention her bizarre encounters with a woman who wears tin foil (Joan Cusack) and Tobin (Mitchell Hope, and apparently not Charlie Heaton), who has to deal with his feelings for the Duke (Kiernan Shipka) who is close to JP (Matthew Noszka). Finally, there's Tobin's friend Keon (Jacob Batalon, who seems to specialize in playing wacky best friends), who wants to throw a party but gets into roadblocks along the way.

   The acting is pretty good around the board. They do well to serve the material that they are given, and imbue it with strong emotion and empathy. It really helps invest us in these characters and their various plights, whether serious or wacky. The stories are well done for the most part, and despite somewhat odd premises, manage to resolve themselves without any feeling rushed or undervalued as a result. It is also pretty funny in some parts, with some nice bits and dialogue that feels realistic for teenager to say, while still managing to be pretty funny. It probably helped that Kay Cannon, who directed the superb comedy Blockers last year, helped write the script. I did like the sense of being completely overwhelmed by snow, being from Colorado and having to deal with that every year.

   Because of the intersecting structure of the story, it can be hard to follow what is happening to whom. Sometimes, I'd mix up stories or get confused when something happened because it pertained to a different storyline that happened a while ago. I feel like a film like this shouldn't be that hard to follow, but I was constantly rewinding to see context, and I was still confused. It's also fairly slow, with a lot of padding that sometimes stops the film cold, and are just ... confusing. This is only an hour and a half, but the padding really makes it feel longer.

    I'm not the target audience for this film, but I'm close enough to that audience that I can say that I probably would've adored this film when I was in that age group. It's the kind of warm teen romantic comedies that I was always sort of a sucker for (I enjoyed the two John Green novels I've read). I can imagine that the audience this is aimed at will likely enjoy it, since it seems very congruent with the way they actually act. Again, not the target audience, so don't know that for certain. As for me at this time, it was good. Not great, not even really that good, but good. Nice little film to watch on a lazy day or celebrate Christmas. So, yeah, if you want to watch something like that and you have a Netflix account, this wouldn't be a bad choice.