Brief Story Line
Drea (Camila Mendes - Riverdale TV series, Palm Springs etc), an ambitious girl from average family was very popular in Rosehill private school where she was best friends with the very rich Tara (Alisha Boe - 13 Reasons Why TV series etc) and few others. Drea's boyfriend was the most popular boy in school named Max (Austin Abrams - Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark etc). After an incident, Drea somehow became the school's pariah and she decided to do revenge on the people who did this to her after she met with another girl named Eleanor (Maya Hawke - Stranger Things TV series, etc).
Eleanor was a new kid in Rosehill and she also had a grudge on another girl there. So she cooperated with Drea to do revenge as well.
And how would the story conclude? You can find them all in this exciting and fun teen drama comedy.
End of Brief Story Line
Well this movie has got a really interesting premise. At first when I began watching, I thought it would be just like the standard teen comedy movie, especially seeing the party scene. But as soon as the incident occurred and Eleanor came into the picture, the movie became more exciting since they came up with the plot to do revenge. It might not be a completely original idea but still it was really fun to see them plotting.
Half way through the movie though, I felt it was moving a bit fast and thought it was too simple. However, then there was a major surprise that was amazing as I really did not see coming (my wife did not either). We both agreed it was the best part of the film which made us look at it from a completely different angle. From that moment, I was highly anticipating how it would end. My wife and I had a bit of divisive opinion on the ending with her feeling that it was not too climactic and wished it was done differently. While for me the ending was satisfying in term of conclusion, but I did feel it to be too simplistic (I was hoping for a more sophisticated end). Nevertheless we still enjoyed the movie.
In this film, there were plenty of new songs that would surely please the younger audience. I was also glad that most of the cast looked youthful enough to convince me they were high school students, even though they are mostly in their mid or even late twenties. Aside from the nice performance of the two lead cast Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke (fun fact that I got from my wife, she is the daughter of Ethan Hawke & Uma Thurman and she actually looked a lot like her), I thought Austin Abrams was really perfect as Max. In addition to the names I mentioned, there were also the brief appearances of familiar faces for me like Sophie Turner (X-Men: Dark Phoenix etc) and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series etc) plus support cast such as Rish Shah as Russ, Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes Always etc) as Gabbi, and few others.
The movie was directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and written by her together with Celeste Ballard. Based on what I read on the internet (as it was not mentioned in the film), Robinson was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 movie Strangers on a Train which was based on novel of the same title written by Patricia Highsmith. But she still has to be applauded for managing to turn this into something fun and interesting set in high school. Btw, if you continued watching the closing credits just before the end (there were few closure scenes shown in the early part), you could catch few funny words from the director.
Overall to me this movie was pretty entertaining with an intriguing plot and an amazing twist that was wonderful. It also managed to combine various elements of teen movies like popular vs non popular students, bullying, performance make over and other stuff. And it was pretty well received by critics too. So if you are looking for something different in a teen movie with those attributes, then you would certainly enjoy this one.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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