Movie review: Everything Everything

Hello!

Hiding behind all the summer blockbusters, are smaller drama films. This particular one is also on a mission to prove that YA movies are not dead yet. This is Everything Everything.

IMDb summary: A teenager who’s spent her whole life confined to her home falls for the boy next door.

While YA adaptations have been on a high a few years back, they have mostly fallen off the radar. Everything, Everything is the most similar to The Fault In Our Stars but no one expects it to replicate the latter’s success. And yet, it might still be a good movie on its own. As a disclaimer – I had no prior knowledge about the film, hadn’t even seen the trailer, so I’m judging it purely based on what I saw on screen.

Writing

Everything, Everything’s script was written by J. Mills Goodloe (she wrote Nicholas Sparks’s The Best of Me and another romantic drama – The Age of Adaline), based on a book of the same name by Nicola Yoon. I’ve never read the book (and do not plan to), so I can’t comment on any changes if there were any. However, I will say that the characters of the story were quite interesting and fairly realistic – at least I was able to identify with both the girl (she reads a lot and writes reviews, kinda an obvious similarity?) and the guy (me and him both have a cynical outlook on the surface). The dialogue between the two leads sounded realistic enough too. It wasn’t just cute but appropriately awkward and uncomfortable.

What annoyed me in the film the most, was the cliche of the overprotective and the abusive parents. Abuse within a family, accidental or deliberate, is a serious issue but it had been reduced to a young adult movie cliche by Hollywood. The actual concept has been long overdone but it has never been explored successfully or in a way that would elicit a change in the real world. This film just basically reduced the abuse from a guy’s dad into an inciting incident.

The girl’s side of the story was explored more widely but the movie did not delve deeper into the issue. If the legal and psychological backgrounds related to the illness that the girl’s mom has were explored, the movie would have been way more sophisticated and would have been elevated from the level of a YA romance. It would have also been interesting to see how her medical background had affected her sickness. Also, the picture should have said the name of the illness a loud –  Munchausen syndrome by proxy – cause a lot of viewers in my screening were confused by the ending. I don’t think they were entirely sure whether the mom was just malicious or whether she actually had a mental disability.

Directing

A relative newcomer to the filmmaking business, Stella Meghie directed Everything, Everything and did a fairly good job. While the cliches such as the pop songs in the soundtrack and the shots of beautiful locations during the ‘escape’ sequence (here they traveled to Hawai – really reminded me of TFIOS sequence in Amsterdam) were present in the film, it also had a couple of original-looking scenes. I especially loved the visualization of the online conversations through the prism of the girl’s architectural models – the dinner and the library. The recurring visual of the astronaut was also a nice Easter Egg within a movie. Overall, not a bad effort from a fresh director.

Acting

Amandla Stenberg, best known for her role as Rue in the first Hunger Games, played the female lead, while Jurassic World’s Nich Robinson played the male lead. He also has prior YA movie experience – he has previously starred in The Fifth Wave. While watching the film, I actually thought that he was a different actor – the one who played the oldest child in Captain Fantastic – George MacKay. Turns out, they are two different people. Weirdly enough, Stenberg, having just starred alongside Robinson, will now perform next to his doppelganger Mackay in Where Hands Touch.

A Disney Legend Anika Noni Rose (the voice of Tiana) played the role of the overprotective mother and did a good job. She did the best she could with a role that could have been rich but was really shallowly written.

In short, Everything, Everything is a good offering of the dying genre, which I doubt it will save. The cast is talented, the directing is inspiring, but the script is lacking.

Rate: 2.8/5

Trailer: Everything Everything trailer