Everything, Everything

Year: 2017

Genre: Drama

Directed: Stella Meghie

Stars: Amandla Stenberg, Nick Robinson, Anika Noni Rose, Ana de la Reguera, Taylor Hickson, Danube Hermosillo, Dan Payne, Fiona Loewi, Sage Brocklebank, Robert Lawrenson, Francoise Yip

Production: MGM

Everything, Everything is the newest YA-novel adaptation that thoughtlessly blends the superficial aspects of teenage romance and the poorly understood, yet perennially showcased plot device of terminal illness. This time around the plot is animated by the wide-eyed gaze and natural naivety of Amandla Stenberg who plays Maddie Whittier a precocious teen with Severe Combined Immunodeficiency or SCIDs. She falls head-over-heels for the boy next door (Robinson) and as one might imagine things go pretty "town of Verona" right quick.

She writes book reviews...what a waste!

Thirty minutes into this film it became abundantly clear that this story, its interchangeable parts and its bland dialogue are beneath the talents of the effervescent Amandla Stenberg and director Stella Meghie. Stenberg especially gives this movie a far more commanding performance than it deserves, with an easygoing charisma that flirts with melodrama without the character actually being and sounding melodramatic. It of course helps that the film is told strictly from her perspective which casts just enough light for you to think Maddie is a fully formed person - you know, with feelings and stuff.

Totally the look of a guy who flirts with other girls while on vacation...

Only adding to the movies hermetically-sealed chastity, Meghie blocks so much of the film with a purposeful book-wise gaze. When Maddie and Olly, yes his name is Olly, finally meet in person, their delicate dance around the room and each other occasionally makes up for the dialogue and total lack of chemistry. Her spacious abode, a glass castle just ten minutes away from the California coast, is agog with striking visual symbolism that only becomes more oppressive as she longs for her stringy-haired honey.

What sells it though are the film's flights of fancy, which not only fill the screen with a sort of tame absurdity but also manages to solve the dreaded cellphone problem. See, part of the issue with setting a film in modern times is everyone has a cellphone. Thus old romantic cliches that were once the bread and butter of these kinds of movies (frantic runs to the airport, momentary misunderstandings, general meddling) can be easily resolved with a simple text. Granted the movie all but bungles any opportunity to explore new dramatic ground, it's fantasy infused dialogues into the wee-hours nonetheless provides the germ of a good workaround.

If the movie had just stayed on autopilot until the end I might have given you a genuine if tacit recommendation. Yet Everything, Everything wants to bet big on a late third-act plot twist that panders to the point of insult and forces gasps to the point of unintentional hilarity. If you're not already swooning by the time this dull romance reaches its pop-song montage, then whatever goodwill you have tethering to this movie is liable to snap.

Thus we get to the point in this review where spoilers abound...

So turns out Maddie doesn't even have SCIDs. Her mother (Rose), fearing the loss of her precious daughter, raises her, in what is essentially a glass prison and makes up the illness because (huff, huff) parenting is hard! I...I just can't. This movie loses all shred of dignity the moment it unleashes this out-of-left-field plot twist which, within context is like aliens showing up at the end of Thelma and Louise (1991) and shouting "you're in the Matrix". I mean, what the literal f**k movie! At least The Fault in Our Stars (2014) had the good sense to pull the trigger and gave us a satisfying if heartbreaking resolution! This piece of crap wants to sell you on its flaccid bulls**tery and then lets you know you wasted your time. This movie doesn't just want the cake, it doesn't just want to eat it too, it wants to go carnivorous earwig on your a**, and eat what's left of your brain! This movie's unexpected and unearned plot twist not only insults the intelligence of its audience; in congress with Olly's own familial hangups, it plops a big 'ol steamer on the prospect of finding love that isn't an unhealthy form of infatuation or infantilization. F**k you movie! Seriously, f**k you!

(Huff) As I said, you're liable to snap. Now is this movie really anti-parent as I so claim? Probably not, at least not purposely. The more likely explanation for its rather stupid choices, my just be a case of excessive pandering on the part of the movie and the book in which it's based on. It panders to the fantasy that all teenage girls are princesses in need of rescuing; that all mothers are secretly witches and that every complicated problem can be solved by a cute boyfriend and a strong wifi connection.

Final Grade: F