☆☆☆½
Turns out John Hughes only made it look easy. Movies like Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink seem to follow a basic formula, but maybe it's one that only Hughes himself could concoct. Earlier this year, the sweet-but-bland Love Simon tried to emulate Hughes, and now comes Alex Strangelove, which goes so far as to call out Hughes' films by name.
Alex Strangelove comes much closer than Love Simon to getting it right, but there's something about the tone and pacing of this film -- which is playing in a few theaters while simultaneously debuting on Netflix -- that feels off, like a recipe that's tasty enough but hasn't been put together quite right.
Daniel Doheny plays high school student Alex Truelove, an overachieving, slightly neurotic geek who starts dating the new kid at school, Claire (her name's a direct reference to The Breakfast Club), played by Madeline Weinstein. In a gender role-reversal that probably never would have crossed Hughes' mind, Claire is putting pressure on Alex to have sex with her, and he's convinced himself that he really, really wants to -- so much so, he recruits his friend Dell (Daniel Zolghadri, the funniest thing about the film) to help him get a hotel room in Nyack, NY, where he and Claire can get it on.
There's a problem, though: Alex isn't all that interested in sex with Claire, and a good part of his anxiety comes from his attraction to Elliott (Antonio Marziale), an open, unashamed boy who graduated from high school a year ago and got thrown out of the house for being gay.
Alex spends most of the film worrying about having sex, and when he and Claire finally do the deed, the result only creates more uncertainty for Alex, who is having a hard time denying is attraction to Elliott.
Alex Strangelove has sex on the brain, which isn't a problem -- it's refreshing to see a film so unconcerned about upholding societal norms on what's acceptable for teenagers, and instead allows them to do things teenagers do. Experimenting with sex and coming out as gay are treated with impressive non-chalance: the movie is about sex, but in the context of making it seem like a normal, healthy part of growing up.
Maybe a little more troubling is the film's open attitude toward drugs and drinking; it makes a joke of both, and after a while these kids come across as borderline delinquents. There's a lot of drinking and drug use in Alex Strangelove, to the point that it's distracting. But, hey, I think back to being 17 and suppose that's having sex and getting drunk were on our minds back then, and it's something of a relief to know that in an era of trigger warnings and school shootings that some things don't change too much.
Daniel Doheny and Madeline Weinstein are cute together and have a believable chemistry, and Antionio Marziale has a curiously underwritten role as the chief rival love interest, as if writer director Craig Johnson (who made the woefully underrated The Skeleton Twins) struggled with making Alex-Claire or Alex-Elliott the most important relationship in the movie.
Alex Strangelove also suffers from abrupt tonal shifts that don't quite work: Claire's mother is sick with cancer, but her condition is merely a plot device and doesn't have emotional resonance; Elliott's tale of being kicked out of the house and moving in with a friend never goes anywhere; and there's a weird (and funny) strand of plot involving a hallucinogenic frog that one of Alex's friends buys on the dark web.
There's too much happening, and what might have seemed mildly zany in Hughes' hands (think of all the plot threads in Sixteen Candles) overwhelms Alex Strangelove. It never quite settles on one approach, and the climactic prom dance feels underdone, as if by that time everyone involved with the film just wanted it to come to an end. What should feel like an emotional catharsis is instead merely sweet.
The movie ends with dozens of real-life video confessionals from high-school kids who have come out and are sharing their story, which is nice, but it would have been nicer if Alex himself had taken more of an emotional journey, had come to some realizations about himself and the way he loves.
Despite those criticisms, Alex Strangelove is worth seeing by people of all sexual orientations and by parents who won't get too alarmed by the casual ways it depicts sex, drugs and alcohol. It's got a more complex view of high schoolers than most comedies, and as a gay movie, it does something important: It takes Alex's attraction to Elliott mostly at face value, without getting preachy or solemn (something Love Simon had a hard time doing) -- when Alex finally tells Claire that he might be in love with someone else, it's the someone else that breaks her heart a bit, not the fact that the someone is a boy.
To that end, Alex Strangelove is progress, and a charming (if awkward) reminder during Gay Pride month that if we really want to see LGBTQ people depicted fairly on screen, we've got to move past being gay and toward being human. Despite its shortcomings, that's something Alex Strangelove accomplishes well.
Viewed June 9, 2018 -- Netflix
Alex Strangelove comes much closer than Love Simon to getting it right, but there's something about the tone and pacing of this film -- which is playing in a few theaters while simultaneously debuting on Netflix -- that feels off, like a recipe that's tasty enough but hasn't been put together quite right.
Daniel Doheny plays high school student Alex Truelove, an overachieving, slightly neurotic geek who starts dating the new kid at school, Claire (her name's a direct reference to The Breakfast Club), played by Madeline Weinstein. In a gender role-reversal that probably never would have crossed Hughes' mind, Claire is putting pressure on Alex to have sex with her, and he's convinced himself that he really, really wants to -- so much so, he recruits his friend Dell (Daniel Zolghadri, the funniest thing about the film) to help him get a hotel room in Nyack, NY, where he and Claire can get it on.
There's a problem, though: Alex isn't all that interested in sex with Claire, and a good part of his anxiety comes from his attraction to Elliott (Antonio Marziale), an open, unashamed boy who graduated from high school a year ago and got thrown out of the house for being gay.
Alex spends most of the film worrying about having sex, and when he and Claire finally do the deed, the result only creates more uncertainty for Alex, who is having a hard time denying is attraction to Elliott.
Alex Strangelove has sex on the brain, which isn't a problem -- it's refreshing to see a film so unconcerned about upholding societal norms on what's acceptable for teenagers, and instead allows them to do things teenagers do. Experimenting with sex and coming out as gay are treated with impressive non-chalance: the movie is about sex, but in the context of making it seem like a normal, healthy part of growing up.
Maybe a little more troubling is the film's open attitude toward drugs and drinking; it makes a joke of both, and after a while these kids come across as borderline delinquents. There's a lot of drinking and drug use in Alex Strangelove, to the point that it's distracting. But, hey, I think back to being 17 and suppose that's having sex and getting drunk were on our minds back then, and it's something of a relief to know that in an era of trigger warnings and school shootings that some things don't change too much.
Daniel Doheny and Madeline Weinstein are cute together and have a believable chemistry, and Antionio Marziale has a curiously underwritten role as the chief rival love interest, as if writer director Craig Johnson (who made the woefully underrated The Skeleton Twins) struggled with making Alex-Claire or Alex-Elliott the most important relationship in the movie.
Alex Strangelove also suffers from abrupt tonal shifts that don't quite work: Claire's mother is sick with cancer, but her condition is merely a plot device and doesn't have emotional resonance; Elliott's tale of being kicked out of the house and moving in with a friend never goes anywhere; and there's a weird (and funny) strand of plot involving a hallucinogenic frog that one of Alex's friends buys on the dark web.
There's too much happening, and what might have seemed mildly zany in Hughes' hands (think of all the plot threads in Sixteen Candles) overwhelms Alex Strangelove. It never quite settles on one approach, and the climactic prom dance feels underdone, as if by that time everyone involved with the film just wanted it to come to an end. What should feel like an emotional catharsis is instead merely sweet.
The movie ends with dozens of real-life video confessionals from high-school kids who have come out and are sharing their story, which is nice, but it would have been nicer if Alex himself had taken more of an emotional journey, had come to some realizations about himself and the way he loves.
Despite those criticisms, Alex Strangelove is worth seeing by people of all sexual orientations and by parents who won't get too alarmed by the casual ways it depicts sex, drugs and alcohol. It's got a more complex view of high schoolers than most comedies, and as a gay movie, it does something important: It takes Alex's attraction to Elliott mostly at face value, without getting preachy or solemn (something Love Simon had a hard time doing) -- when Alex finally tells Claire that he might be in love with someone else, it's the someone else that breaks her heart a bit, not the fact that the someone is a boy.
To that end, Alex Strangelove is progress, and a charming (if awkward) reminder during Gay Pride month that if we really want to see LGBTQ people depicted fairly on screen, we've got to move past being gay and toward being human. Despite its shortcomings, that's something Alex Strangelove accomplishes well.
Viewed June 9, 2018 -- Netflix
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