To be honest, I am getting a little tired of young adult novel adaptations. You know what? I want to rephrase that: I am getting tired of operatic or dramatic YA adaptations that focus on the terrible dialogue than the characters or the story. Plus, a trend that is coming along, recently, where teenage couples are coping on the verge of losing a counterpart because of a disease: think about it: The Fault in Our Stars, Me Before You even if it is not old, A Walk to Remember. In my opinion, I do not think any of the movies work. With this movie, this product continues the trend of bad YA movies. However, this movie is different in its mistakes than the previous films and I will explain later in the review.
Madeline "Maddy" Whittier (Amandla Stenberg from The Hunger Games) is living in a house, in a secluded state due to her disease called severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), meaning her antibodies are not properly fighting off the infection. Her mother (Anika Noni Rose) has kept her in the house because of her large history of diseases/infections when Maddy was a child. Her only friends are her nurse, Carla (Ana De La Reguera) and her daughter, Rosa (Danube R. Hermosillo). Maddy is part of an online support group with children that have SCID. She spends her time immersing herself reading books, watching movies with her mother and building models.
One day, Maddy sees new neighbors next door and spots Oliver 'Olly' Bright (Nick Robinson) riding his skateboard down the street. He looks up at the window looking at Maddy and he smiles. She smiles back. That night, Olly and his sister, Kara (Taylor Hickson) bring a bundt cake to the Whittier house and Dr. Whittier (the mother) declines it since the cake comes from the outside. Later, Oliver gives Maddy his phone number as they both get along as friends as they text each other. They talk about their backgrounds and also their dreams, including that Maddy is desired to go view the ocean. They both get romantically involved as they both go to Hawaii despite her sickness.
The movie starts out strong with the two young adults communicating with each other and the chemistry is there. However, there's not much depth to the characters individually as Maddy narrates that her backstory was rough but it does not got too much into perspective as to how she got so secluded. Did she have a lot more friends than the people she communicated online who has the same disease? Plus, there's not much depth into all into the Olly character where we see a scene in which he has a rough life in which his father and Olly do not get along and we witness the abuse. Then, it becomes ludicrous as we get deeper into the backstory surrounding Maddy's disease and the revelation is startling and not too nice surrounding not just the two of them but the nurse and her daughter.
I thought Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson gave good performances both together and individually. It is the script's fault that the characters are not fleshed out well enough. But, they do what they can. Anika Noni Rose is real solid as her mother as she and Stenberg have a natural bond as mother-daughter. The third act and the screenplay is what drags the movie down for me because there is not much emotional drive and it completely loses plausibility surrounding by loopholes. I had a question regarding Maddie's plane tickets: where did she get the money to purchase those plane tickets? Did she donate blood or something? Director Stella Meghie adapts the novel and the result becomes a bit bland with underdeveloped characters and not much effort into the screenplay. I admired the execution of the story and the chemistry with the characters but it becomes a flawed movie.
**
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