Drama. Drama. Drama. When you are in that high school age, you are drowned in that drama that you do not want to be involved in. Everybody has had that problem where somebody has to be involved or forced to be involved in a situation. But, when you mature over time or have "grown up", you roll your eyes at the drama and do not want to get involved. Now, this day and age, people, mostly women, have embrace themselves with their own bodies after critiquing people's idea of the perfect body. Criticisms about one's appearance hurts their self-esteem but stand up for themselves. With this movie, its heart was in the right place but after the movie is over, you start to question the narrative that becomes uneven and attempts to place a message in the right place but sort of places it in the garbage can by accident.
A smart, unpopular girl named Sierra Burgess (Shannon Purser) aspiring to get into Stanford University. Even though she has charm and intelligence under her belt, she does not fit the high school profile of traditional, "high-school" standard of physical beauty. Popular mean girl Veronica (Kristine Froseth) tries to make Sierra's life miserable, commenting and insulting on her appearance, which Sierra sidesteps. A football player named Jamey (Noah Centineo) asks Veronica for her number but she gives him Sierra's number instead so she can embarrass Sierra.
Veronica's lie leads to Jamey texting Sierra, believing she is Veronica. After texting each other for a while, Sierra begins to like Jamey, even though she does not know he is on the other side of the conversation. When Sierra begins to discover that Jamey is talking with Veronica, she approaches Veronica and she makes a deal with her. Sierra would help tutor Veronica in exchange for her helping Sierra talking with Jamey.
Like I said before, its heart and message in the right place and it was a good start along with the performance and I will get to that in a moment but it seems that the good message becomes irrelevant after the plot gets started. So, Sierra wants to improve herself and her self-esteem because of her body image but her personality seems to get us to like her. The biggest problem with the movie is that Sierra's actions contradict the good message. For example, Sierra could have just said "wrong number" to Jamey's text right from the beginning and that is what many teenagers would (hopefully) do. Plus, even though director Ian Samuels and writer Lindsey Beer try to make a confident movie about self-confidence, they went the wrong away by making fun of other minorities, negating the positivity going into the film. They make fun of transphobia, homophobia, deafness and schizophrenic people. And, I thought that that was sort of lazy writing.
I will say this that even though I did not find Sierra to be likable character in the end, Shannon Purser, who was popular after her brief Stranger Things appearance, did a good job displaying her charm and confidence into her role as best she could. It is the writing that dragged the character down. I liked RJ Cyler as her best friend. Noah Centineo, from To All The Boys I Loved Before, still has a good range of acting in him but I want him to play somebody else than a high school jock. I felt that the performance from Kristine Froseth was fine but found her character and her arc to be wildly predictable.
The movie is lit well with the cinematography by John W. Rutland but I found the whole experience, because it went into a detour with the screenwriting, to be boring after a while after all the holes, eradicating my expectations to my rooting factor towards Sierra. After the end of the movie, I did not want to be friends with Sierra and I thought the ending was contrived, trying to manipulate me. I will understand that people will be mad after watching this movie because even though a lesson about body image, self-esteem and bullying is to be learned, the positivity is thrown out the window after being contradicted with sinful actions with no consequences. It is an utterly ridiculous movie that misses the mark entirely. If you want a better movie about this subject, watch one of the best movies of 2018, Eighth Grade.
It is unrated. Although it has sexual references, language, bullying and teen partying, it is fine for teenagers and up.
**
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