Adapted from the novel by Jennifer E. Smith, director Michael Lewen’s “Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between” captures adolescent interactions and intelligence through an empathetic lens. But even though this Netflix original doesn’t condescend to its targeted teen audience, it fails to surmount basic issues dealing with narrative credulity and the outcome’s predictability.
The story centers on two modern-minded teens who enter a 10-month-long dating compact as an obligatory starter romance, agreeing to break up the night before leaving for college. But would real teens remotely act this way? Or are the adult creators transposing their own ideas onto teen turf?
Cautious high school senior Clare (Talia Ryder) thinks she’s risk-averse. All the moving around when she was young, due to her parents’ divorce, made her plunge head first into her textbooks. Determined not to be distracted by boys or friendships, she concentrated instead on securing...
The story centers on two modern-minded teens who enter a 10-month-long dating compact as an obligatory starter romance, agreeing to break up the night before leaving for college. But would real teens remotely act this way? Or are the adult creators transposing their own ideas onto teen turf?
Cautious high school senior Clare (Talia Ryder) thinks she’s risk-averse. All the moving around when she was young, due to her parents’ divorce, made her plunge head first into her textbooks. Determined not to be distracted by boys or friendships, she concentrated instead on securing...
- 7/6/2022
- by Courtney Howard
- Variety Film + TV
Ask Natasha Kingston (Yara Shahidi) who she adores, and she’ll answer astronomer Carl Sagan, whose presence hovers like Cupid over Ry Russo-Young’s winsome and intelligent teen romance “The Sun Is Also a Star,” based on the bestselling Ya novel by Nicola Yoon. Like Sagan, Natasha is rational and trusts only in the scientific method. Love, she insists, is “legit dead-ass not real” — or at least, it’s not provable — until Natasha cosmically collides with moony high schooler Daniel Bae (Charles Melton) when her baseball jacket embroidered “Deus Ex Machina” catches the would-be poet’s attention.
Alas, tomorrow, Ins is scheduled to deport Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican. Between appointments with her immigration lawyer (John Leguizamo), the strangers have one day to wander the city debating their destiny, during which Daniel takes his cues from the New York Times’ viral 2015 Modern Love column “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.
Alas, tomorrow, Ins is scheduled to deport Natasha, an undocumented Jamaican. Between appointments with her immigration lawyer (John Leguizamo), the strangers have one day to wander the city debating their destiny, during which Daniel takes his cues from the New York Times’ viral 2015 Modern Love column “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.
- 5/15/2019
- by Amy Nicholson
- Variety Film + TV
“What if I told you I could get you to fall in love with me…?”
College-bound romantic Daniel Bae and Jamaica-born pragmatist Natasha Kingsley meet—and fall for each other—over one magical day amidst the fervor and flurry of New York City. Sparks immediately fly between these two strangers, who might never have met had fate not given them a little push. But will fate be enough to take these teens from star-crossed to lucky in love? With just hours left on the clock in what looks to be her last day in the U.S., Natasha is fighting against her family’s deportation as fiercely as she’s fighting her budding feelings for Daniel, who is working just as hard to convince her they are destined to be together. A modern-day story about finding love against all odds, “The Sun Is Also a Star” explores whether our lives...
College-bound romantic Daniel Bae and Jamaica-born pragmatist Natasha Kingsley meet—and fall for each other—over one magical day amidst the fervor and flurry of New York City. Sparks immediately fly between these two strangers, who might never have met had fate not given them a little push. But will fate be enough to take these teens from star-crossed to lucky in love? With just hours left on the clock in what looks to be her last day in the U.S., Natasha is fighting against her family’s deportation as fiercely as she’s fighting her budding feelings for Daniel, who is working just as hard to convince her they are destined to be together. A modern-day story about finding love against all odds, “The Sun Is Also a Star” explores whether our lives...
- 5/1/2019
- by Movie Geeks
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
For many years, filmmaker Ry Russo-Young was hustling on the indie circuit both as an actor and as a writer/director with her well-received second movie You Won’t Miss Me famously not being released until nearly two years after it premiered at Sundance. Its release was predicated on by winning the less-than-coveted Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You.” (It actually beat La La Land director Damian Chazelle’s first movie for that award, too!)
Her fourth movie Before I Fall, adapted from Lauren Oliver’s popular young adult novel, is a giant step forward for Russo-Young in terms of tackling someone else’s material and a movie she didn’t write.
It stars Zoey Deutch (Everybody Wants Some) as Samantha Kingston, a typical high school student who hangs out with the popular girls, who are constantly tormenting a strange classmate named Juliet Sykes...
Her fourth movie Before I Fall, adapted from Lauren Oliver’s popular young adult novel, is a giant step forward for Russo-Young in terms of tackling someone else’s material and a movie she didn’t write.
It stars Zoey Deutch (Everybody Wants Some) as Samantha Kingston, a typical high school student who hangs out with the popular girls, who are constantly tormenting a strange classmate named Juliet Sykes...
- 3/1/2017
- by Edward Douglas
- LRMonline.com
Certainly one of the friendliest, and one of the more forthcoming, interviews I’ve ever conducted, Before I Fall director Ry Russo Young and I knew we did not have much time to chat, so we jumped into it rather quick. In no time, we were discussing the early false starts of this film adaptation of the Ya novel from Lauren Oliver, from it’s beginnings as a potential studio film at Fox to the eventual indie-styled production starring a fantastic Zoey Deutch.
So you’re meeting with Fox about Before I Fall…
…I took a meeting at Fox. It’s just one meeting. It doesn’t seem to go well. To be honest, okay. Then a year later I get a call saying, ‘Do you still like that [Before I Fall] script?’ I say yes, because there are a very small handful of scripts that I like. And then I hear that...
So you’re meeting with Fox about Before I Fall…
…I took a meeting at Fox. It’s just one meeting. It doesn’t seem to go well. To be honest, okay. Then a year later I get a call saying, ‘Do you still like that [Before I Fall] script?’ I say yes, because there are a very small handful of scripts that I like. And then I hear that...
- 2/28/2017
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken, John Turturro and Alicia Silverstone are among the cast of producer Marc Turtletaub’s directorial debut.
The deities of Mount Olympus descend to the streets of New York City, where they wreak havoc on mortals and much worse on the audience, in Marc Turtletaub’s myth-inspired comedy, Gods Behaving Badly. Rounding up a cast of stars -- many who had their heyday two decades ago -- this outdated, unfunny satire feels like an extended SNL sketch from the early ‘90’s, and one that probably would have been tossed into the wastepaper basket. Some bankable names and a mildly clever idea should send these immortals straight to VOD, with a small courtesy release in select cities.
Based on the book by Marie Phillips, the concept is simple: The Greek gods are alive and well, and currently living in a Manhattan townhouse, where they engage in endless petty...
The deities of Mount Olympus descend to the streets of New York City, where they wreak havoc on mortals and much worse on the audience, in Marc Turtletaub’s myth-inspired comedy, Gods Behaving Badly. Rounding up a cast of stars -- many who had their heyday two decades ago -- this outdated, unfunny satire feels like an extended SNL sketch from the early ‘90’s, and one that probably would have been tossed into the wastepaper basket. Some bankable names and a mildly clever idea should send these immortals straight to VOD, with a small courtesy release in select cities.
Based on the book by Marie Phillips, the concept is simple: The Greek gods are alive and well, and currently living in a Manhattan townhouse, where they engage in endless petty...
- 11/13/2013
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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