This Film is Netflix Famous

#What’sup everyone? Slick Dungeon here with yet another movie review of a movie that you should definitely avoid watching.

You know how people go around annoyingly posting their life on instagram all the time? You know how every teen comedy/romance/drama ever is about a nerdy girl (who is clearly attractive but just wearing glasses and braces) who becomes pretty (by wearing a dress and doing her hair and makeup) and then gets ogled by her classmates for changing her look (yet no one ever mentions how overtly horrible these guys looking are) and then gets noticed by her hot crush (who is typically a jerk but not always) and then ignores her true friends (who obviously don’t want to be stuck in the friend zone for all time) and then has to go back to being the “nerdy” girl (but still is able to dress up when she wants to for say prom or something) and then everything works out so that the girl either gets the hot guy (if he is nice) or the friend gets the formerly nerdy girl (if the hot guy is a jerk) and the movie wraps up with a life lesson where you now know that what it takes in life is to be true to yourself (but apparently wearing make up and ditching the glasses is a plus)? Yeah, that’s this movie. Also, you know how the Fyre festival was super hyped up to be full of amazing influential people who are super wealthy and attractive and the party was going to be amazing but then turned out to just suck? That’s also this movie.

Look, any movie title with a hashtag at the beginning was doomed to be crappy. Then putting it in a high school was also just asking for garbage here. It’s kind of hard to summarize what is exactly wrong with this film but there is plenty to dissect. Let me start by summarizing the plot.

Dani is our main character. She starts the film at a camp where her friend tells her that a boy she likes wants to make out with her. We all see this coming right? When she gets there and tries to kiss the boy, it turns out to be a prank where they get her to almost kiss a pig. Then she gets stuck with all kinds of nicknames like pigs breath etc. We can all feel for Dani even though it also feels like we have seen this exact same scene one hundred thousand times before.

Fast forward to high school. Dani isn’t any more popular than she was before. She’s gone from wearing braces to a retainer and she seems a bit awkward but overall she’s doing fine. At school though, she is still made fun of, and the boy she likes is dating this instagram/youtube model who is extremely shallow and mean. This is Alexa and it’s obvious this will be Dani’s rival for the whole film. And obviously she is the same person who set up the stunt at the camp years ago.

We get to see Dani do things like be nice to dogs at the clinic she volunteers at, get into arguments with her sister who trends way more online than Dani herself and hang out with her friend Freddie who is an aspiring DJ.

Dani has an interview for a scholarship and decides to get dressed up fancy and go to school. Everyone notices. Also, around this time, the hot guy that Dani likes breaks up with Alexa. Everyone notices that too. Cameron, the aforementioned hot guy is now available and interested in Dani. The rest of the film is Dani making bad choices like going to parties when she shouldn’t, letting her friend Freddie down and saying things she shouldn’t in front of her boyfriend. Then, you know, making it all right again.

Watching all of that is just like watching… every teen movie ever.

There are a couple of twists and turns that are changed up just slightly enough to make this not exactly the same as all these movies but close. The hot guy who Dani has been in love with forever turns out to actually be a really nice guy and to have had a crush on Dani since prior to her getting dressed up. The guy stuck in the friend zone acts as outraged as he should for being screwed over by Dani but doesn’t go ahead and lay the bomb of being in love with her this whole time. Most of the characters are portrayed as being at least somewhat smart and caring, with the exception of Alexa and even she fakes it for a little bit (albeit to get what she wants). The parents in the film are caring and only kind of out of touch, not completely ignorant of their kids troubles. And finally, the whole thing looks like it was an attempt at being an instagram story in and of itself.

A few things definitely stuck out to me here though. I have a list.

• As far as pranks go, the whole pig kissing thing seems pretty mild and I think that it would have been forgotten more or less before these people got to high school
• The Alexa character literally walks into school with her dog, a bunch of cameras, and a group of friends. The principal reasonably stops her to ask what the dog is doing there to which Alexa claims it is a service dog and that the principal must hate dogs, or people who need them, and she could just tell her nine million followers about it. Yet the principal doesn’t ask for any proof it is a service dog! Sorry, but schools actually have rules about these things and if the principal had let that go like that in real life, he would have said goodbye to his job. I know, it’s dumb to complain about a fictional film being unrealistic in something like this but when it is that obvious to me, it feels like the film makers are just being lazy.
• Freddie is desperate to be a DJ. He needs Dani to give him a ride but ends up two hours late because she flakes on him. He ends up getting a Lyft over there and is still two hours late. Dude, when you know you will be a little late, get your butt where you are supposed to be!!!
• Dani is a smart person but is very easily swept up into the whole internet famous world and goes from a non-drinker to showing up drunk at Cameron’s important television interview. That seemed like a huge shift in character waaaaay too fast.
• A disturbingly large amount of this film involves Bob’s Big Boy.
• After Alexa betrayed Dani once, why would she trust her again? This makes no sense.
• Speaking of Alexa, she seems like a horrible, horrible, horrible person. Why does she have friends again?
• The acting in this is not bad but there are zero stand out performances and honestly after watching this, I can’t think of a single line of dialogue that sticks out to me at all.
• At one point Dani runs her dad’s credit card for a $400 shoe purchase. Later her dad calmly tells her she still owes him the money. The level of parental rage portrayed over that was far, far, far below what should be reasonable expected in this situation.
• This film definitely gives good reason to just quit social media but no one does it.

Basically if you have seen a movie with teenagers in it, you’ve seen this. Don’t bother wasting your time watching it. Just watch Mean Girls again instead. Also, just as a side note, Netflix could have put more money into Stranger Things or something like that but nope, they wanted to go with this garbage.

Next week I will be back with another review of what was originally a made for TV drama, Lizzie Borden Took an Ax. I don’t know where she took it to though…

#Yours,

Slick Dungeon