Sierra Burgess Is a Loser

Year 15, Day 46 - 2/15/23 - Movie #4,347

BEFORE: This is the second film this month - and second in Valentine's Week - that's (loosely) based on the classic tale of "Cyrano de Bergerac".  So that means that over the last few years in Hollywood, there were at least THREE films based on that story in production, I'm counting the "Cyrano" movie starring Peter Dinklage that came out last year.  I worked at the NYC premiere of THAT film, but mostly outside doing crowd control - I got to see all the stars arrive by limo that way.  That film turned out to be much trickier to link to, so I've got to see about next year, or if not whether I can work it in somewhere else. 

Wolfgang Novogratz carries over again from "The Last Summer", and I'm afraid I've run out of high-school based romances with Wolfgang Novogratz in them - I'm going to miss the guy, I think.  More filmmakers need to cast him as high-school jocks before next February rolls around. After four films, he's tied for second place (along with Robert De Niro and Liam Neeson!) for appearances in Year 15. 

THE PLOT:  A case of mistaken identity results in unexpected romance when the most popular girl in high school and the biggest loser must come together to win over their crushes. 

AFTER: Yeah, this one's a bit clunkier than "The Half of It", both films tried to update the story by switching out text message for love letters, which I suppose you have to do these days, it's just that "The Half of It" did it better. Plus it had lesbians, so way cooler. By contrast, "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser" had so much texting that I COULD NOT READ on my TV screen, and I've got a giant TV screen, by the way (it's not bragging if it's true...).  Some films resort to putting the contents of text messages in little extra "bubbles" on the screen, for the benefit of the viewers, which I just plain hate, but at least then I can read them.  Here some director or cinematographer just assumed that we'd all be able to read those text messages from the phone, as an actor with very shaky hands held them. Well, thanks to the bright text messages on an even brighter phone screen, most of the time I COULD NOT READ the text messages.  Once in a while a character would also SAY the message as he or she typed it, which was helpful because then the contents would also be in the captions, which I keep on.  But, most of the time, they didn't, so I couldn't. What a shame. 

What DOES work here is the popular girl giving out the unpopular girl's phone number instead of her own, to prospective dates that she wants to get rid of.  After all, she IS dating a college boy, so why does she need high-school boys calling her?  The poor sap gets Sierra's phone number instead of Veronica's, and Sierra is just so happy that SOMEONE is texting her that she doesn't take the time to correct him.  Umm, fine, if that's the way you want to handle this, but there's a term for pretending to be someone else on-line, and it's "catfishing".  How are we supposed to like Sierra as a main character if she's guilty about being dishonest, and pretending to be the most popular girl in school, just to be able to talk to an interested boy?  

Further problems arise when they stop sending emojis and memes, and Jamey starts sending pics from his workout sessions?  How is Sierra supposed to get photos of Veronica?  (Umm, the easy answer is to download them from her social media feed, but either she didn't think of that, or the film just doesn't want to go there.  But it's all catfishing, right?). Instead Sierra sees that Veronica is having troubles because her college boyrfriend doesn't think she's smart enough, so she agrees to tutor Veronica in exchange for some posed photos taken with Sierra's phone.  But then as things escalate, they have to fake a FaceTime session, and then Jamey wants a date with Veronica in the real world. 

To make things worse, Sierra has to pretend to be deaf to get close to Jamey herself, because she thinks he'll recognize her voice from all their phone conversations.  She pretends (badly) to be able to use sign language, only to discover that Jamey has a deaf brother, and her signing moves are all nonsense.  Yeah, this shouldn't end well - look what happens when an unpopular girl gets a little bit of attention, it's like giving water to a thirsty person in the desert, she just wants more and more.  It probably would have been better if she never got any attention at all in high school, because then she'd have her head on straight and she wouldn't cross these lines to deceive someone into kissing her.  Stealing is wrong, even if you're stealing a kiss, that's todays "Love Tip" from me to you. 

Look, I didn't date in high school, and I turned out fine. (It's convenient you don't know me IRL, so you can't verify this...). But the presence of Alan Ruck as Sierra's father reminds me of something that was said in the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" about his character, Cameron: "He's going to marry the first girl he lays, and she's going to treat him like shit."  Hey, I resemble that remark. (Sierra's mother is played by another actor from teen movies, Lea Thompson, who was in "Back to the Future", "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "All the Right Moves".)

Some things were very confusing here - like the fact that Sierra plays in the marching band and Veronica is a cheerleader for one school, but Jamey is a football player for a different school?  Wait, don't they all go to the SAME school?  If not, then how do they all know each other?  There's a reference to some kind of "East/West" game, so some characters go to East Pasadena High and others go to West Pasadena High, that's just odd and clunky - maybe there are two high schools in Pasadena, but the movie would be a lot simpler if they all attended the same school, so why not just make that happen?  Absolutely nothing is gained by making Jamey play football for a "rival" team.  (Who grew up in Pasadena, the screenwriter or the director?)

Likewise, nothing is gained by showing that the popular gal has a horrible home life, where her father left her mother and her sisters are brats straight out of "Dance Moms". This humanizes Veronica, sure, but it makes it a bit harder to hate her, and you don't want to come close to justifying her bullying of Sierra, that's not right.  Having Sierra's father be a successful author, and showing Sierra trying to beef up her college applications by trying out for the boys track team are other plotlines that go nowhere.  She's not a runner, so why try out for track, and even then, I'm sure there's a girls track team, is she trying to make a political point of trying out for the boys' team?  Very confusing indeed. 

Also, was there NO better time for Sierra to talk to her best friend, Dan than during band rehearsal?  Like, WHILE the band is playing?  This makes no sense, how do they even hear each other?  Why doesn't the band leader tell them to stop talking and pay attention?  For that matter, why can't Sierra date Dan, if they're such good friends?  Just wondering. 

Well, that's enough high-school films, for now, anyway.  Oddly, two of them had leads that are known for being on "Stranger Things", Natalia Dyer was in "Yes, God, Yes" and today's film had Shannon Purser, who was in Season 1 of the show but, her character, Barb, umm, disappeared a few episodes in, before anybody knew to look for her in the Upside-Down. Just bad luck, I guess. 

Also starring Shannon Purser, Kristine Froseth (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), RJ Cyler (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Noah Centineo (last seen in "Charlie's Angels" (2019)), Loretta Devine (last seen in "The Starling"), Giorgia Whigham, Alice Lee (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), Lea Thompson (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Alan Ruck (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Mary Pat Gleason (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Chrissy Metz (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Elizabeth Tovey, Mariam Tovey, Matt Malloy (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Will Peltz (last seen in "Time Freak"), Geoff Stults (last seen in "12 Strong"), Shoniqua Shandai (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Joey Bell, Mario Revolori (also carrying over from "The Last Summer"), Cochise Zornoza, Joey Morgan (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), JT Neal, Brandon Thomas Lee (last seen in "Cosmic Sin").

RATING: 4 out of 10 hurdles (literal ones on the track, not metaphorical ones)