I am about to make a hard sell, but I promise I can send you to a great movie if you are willing to hear me out on this one. If you’ve only seen the trailer and the poster, you’ll think this is A Fault in Our Stars 2.0. Honestly, I thought the exact same thing. I never would have saw this were I not married to a woman who has a major crush on Cole Sprouse. However, I am indeed married to a woman who loves Cole Sprouse so seeing this movie became another thing to add to my “benefits of being married” list.
What Worked
Surprises: When a movie can take a hard core cliche and subvert it, I get a special type of thrill. How a “sick teenagers in love” movie was able to escape the limitations of the genre is astounding and first thing the movie had to do to make this a good film. Consider step one done.
Relationships: This movie has an odd amount of relationship pairings and every single one of them feel real and meaningful. Most romance movies struggle to even get the romance right but this one is able to even make the other relationship dynamics work. Honestly, how often is it that a movie can create this much chemistry between all of its cast? Again, this movie is giving me a special type of thrill.
Payoffs: There are a lot of things I can’t say without spoilers so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that this movie sets things up and pays them off really well. There are multiple times they pull a detail from the beginning in a way that I’m not only surprised but also pleased by the move. When you go to as many movies as I do, you can start to predict most of the surprises in a movie. Since this movie was able to shock me multiple times, it earns a lot of points in my book.
Emotion: The amount of times this story is able to take the same factors, shake them up in a new order, and give me the feels is unreal. Truly, I don’t think another movie will ever be able to layer in this many “oh my heart” movements with so little ever again. If you are needing a movie to hit you in the feels, this will do it. Remember how I mentioned my wife made me come to this? She cried four different times during this!
What Didn’t Work
I’ve been criticized before in my reviews for giving positives, negatives, and thus no real clarity on if a movie should be viewed or not. This is fair criticism (I have the impulse to lay everything out because I was a debate kid in college). While I won’t say this movie had zero flaws, I am here to say that this was a time when I didn’t give any negatives. I have nothing bad enough that it merits mentioning here. If that isn’t a statement on making this movie worth watching, I don’t know what is.
Conclusion: This year hasn’t had a major hitter yet, but we are nearly a third of the way through and this is my favorite movie so far. If you enjoy romance movies with more substance than just the romance and need a good hit in the “feels” you really should give this a chance. Five stars for Five Feet Apart! (Blake Hodges)