Finley, a talented aspiring violinist, meets Beckett, a famous young movie star, on the way to her college semester abroad program in a small coastal village in Ireland.
Our Take: Worth it if you like young adult novel adaptations, but not much substance otherwise.
Streaming? Nope. They want you to see it in theaters.
You know those movies where you can watch the trailer and know exactly what’s going to happen? This is that movie. There might have been half a dozen subplots, but the gist of the film was neatly packaged and set to a One Direction song. We were automatically intrigued when we saw the trailers, so obviously the advertising worked. And it lived up to every expectation we had for a young adult novel turned movie starring b-list actors that you think you might have seen in something else recently.
Was it a good movie? No. There were editing and wardrobe mistakes. Yes; It looked like it was somewhat hastily thrown together. The writing was trite. And above all else, as mentioned, it was predictable. Was it a good watch though? Absolutely.
There was nothing pretentious about this movie. It knew what it was trying to be from the get-go. The performances were adequate, the setting picturesque, and the ending exactly what you might expect of a rom-dramadey written to appeal to the masses. Sometimes predictability isn’t a bad thing. In this world of unprecedented times it’s nice to watch something completely superficial and expected. This film didn’t require us to think a whole lot, featured some relatively attractive people, and was a good way to spend a couple of hours. Nobody’s going to win an Oscar here, but sometimes it’s nice to just have something very consumable.
It joins the long list of Young Adult novel adaptations that have hit the screen – some in the past year. For us, it ranks pretty high on the watchability scale which is about the only metric you can use for these.
Smash and Nasty go to the movies 