BEFORE: I've hit the wall on romance films, I simply do not want to watch another one. This would only be a problem if I were 16 days into a planned 40-day chain of them. Maybe it was those four high-school romance films in a row, all featuring yet-to-be-acclaimed acting sensation Wolfgang Novogratz. But I've got to do something to break up the monotony - the weekend's coming up, maybe I can sneak in a viewing of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and sit on the review, now that I KNOW I'm probably going to be able to work that review in after St. Patrick's Day. Yeah, that might help. Next week I've got a bunch of films that were leftover from last year or I think maybe the year before that - and as it stands right now, I'm not looking forward to rom-coms from the 1990's that I passed on before, some of them several times.
Lea Thompson carries over again from "Unplugging".
THE PLOT: The story of Izzy Klein, a young woman fresh out of college as she strikes up and ruins relationships with several men and struggles to navigate the failures of adulthood, leaning on her mother and younger sister for support.
AFTER: Ugh, this movie isn't helping, it's just more college-age people (or probably actors in their late 20's pretending to be college-age) and oh my GOD, they're so self-absorbed. HOW FULL of yourself can you possibly BE? Look, I'm sorry you're having trouble finding the love of your life, but that's your problem, not my problem, why should I have to watch a movie about someone else's struggle to find their soulmate. Quite simply, I don't care. I'm guessing it's auto-biographical, written by the lead actress who happens to be Lea Thompson's daughter, and would this movie even have gotten made if it weren't written by a "nepo baby"? No, because Lea Thompson directed the movie her daughter wrote, so I'm calling it, the fix is in.
Ugh, let me count the ways I hate this self-entitled lead character - she's about to graduate college, but the problem is that she hasn't apparently done any of the required course work, for ACTING class, no less. So she's got to perform a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in order to get SOME kind of credit for the class - but instead of learning the lines, she just makes out with her scene partner every time they get together. An acting degree MUST be one of the easiest college degrees to get, you just have to, umm, act. And she can't bring herself to do that? Why is she studying to be an actor if she can't even bring herself to learn ONE scene from ONE Shakespeare play? She comes off as someone who's coasted her whole life, has never done one bit of work or put any effort into anything, and she just wants everything handed to her - degree, please. Then to make matters worse, she blacks out during the performance, and only gets to graduate by blackmailing the teacher after catching him with a student. Disgusting.
Then she wants to take a gap year - FROM WHAT? From all the work she didn't do during college? Gee, I can't imagine why all of her relationships keep failing, could it be because she's not putting any effort into maintaining them? So she sets out to find the relationship she "deserves", because again, she feels like everything in life should just be handed to her - I can only imagine this is something the actress knows about first hand. Well, they say "write what you know" after all. She moves to L.A. to stay with her successful actress sister, and right away goes to a party but hooks up with the drummer from her ex-boyfriend's band and leaves before the agent she was supposed to meet and network with. Ugh again.
After the drummer goes on tour, Izzy manages to go on a few auditions, but after just a couple unsuccessful ones, her agent dumps her and she announces she's done with acting. Sure, the minute things get a little bit difficult, she just takes the ball and goes home so the game is over. And somehow, this of course is not her fault, it's just that "the world's against her". So then she starts binge-watching TV and doesn't leave her room, for months. Sure, that'll make things better, that's a solid plan.
Both sisters meet up with their mother, and mom's new girlfriend, in Lake Tahoe (see, entitled!). At the first opportunity, she claims that she can't remember how to ski and instead gets a handsome ski instructor to escort her safely down the slopes. OF COURSE she hooks up with the ski instructor, that's her M.O., why work on her personal problems when she can just start a new relationship with a hot ski instructor and feel better about herself that way?
But finally Izzy has to get some kind of job, so she works as her own sister's assistant on a movie set. Just when you think there's some kind of hope that this character can accomplish something, maybe hold down the world's easiest position as her own sister's helper, she starts flirting with the director. Yeah, that's either a shortcut to success in the movie world or a quick way to get fired from the set. But it turns out they have something of a real connection, but it ends up going nowhere just because the director is so introverted and painfully shy. Yeah, this makes no sense because shy people don't actually flourish in the director's chair - shy people write films, but they have to network to become directors, I know this for a fact. My lack of networking skills in film school convinced me that directing wasn't for me, I'd be better off trying my hand at producing. How many shy directors are there in Hollywood? Zero.
And through it all, Izzy never really gets a clue that she needs to work on HERSELF before she can navigate an adult relationship. Instead she regards the end of her gap year as some kind of new beginning, but I don't think this character is capable of change, she just wants to coast her whole life trying to get ahead by flirting her way to the top, and wondering why she keeps bouncing from one negative relationship to the next while never breaking the cycle that she's put herself into. And honestly I don't think any of her men were all that spectacular, so is the title meant to be ironic?
Also starring Madelyn Deutch, Zoey Deutch (last seen in "The Professor"), Melissa Bolona (last seen in "Acts of Violence"), Avan Jogia (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Nicholas Braun (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Brandon T. Jackson (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters"), Cameron Monaghan, Zach Roerig, Jesse Bradford (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Bob Clendenin (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Alison Martin, Troy Evans (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Alec Mapa (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), D.W. Moffett (last seen in "Thirteen"), Lily Anne Harrison, Amy Pietz (last seen in "The Whole Ten Yards"), Alex Boling.
RATING: 4 out of 10 broken ceramics
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