A
film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net on Mar. 3, 2017.
It
takes a mediocre movie like Before I Fall
to illustrate how brilliant Harold Ramis’ Groundhog
Day is. Founded on the same premise, the movies show the variances that can
result from different approaches. Groundhog
Day uses comedy and wit to buffer its existential angst and cosmic sense of
karma. Before I Fall, on the other
hand, adopts an oh-so-serious tone and resorts to awkward melodrama to get the
point across.
It’s
Valentine’s Day and high school senior Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch) is doomed to live it repeatedly until she does
whatever it is that Fate has decreed she must do to move on. It begins with her
waking up to a song on her iPhone (not, by the way, I’ve Got You, Babe – the movie doesn’t have that sort of
referential sense of humor) and ends with her dying in a car accident. Except,
instead of waking up at the Pearly Gates, she returns to the beginning of the
day with her memories intact. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to
repeat it. After acclimating, Samantha varies things a little - dumping her
three Queen Bee friends (Halston Sage,
Medalion Rahimi and Cynthy Wu), trying to hook up with a nicer boy, etc. She eventually figures
out that getting out of the loop involves doing something related to outcast
Juliet Sykes (Elena Kampouris), but
what?
The
kind of repetition necessary to Before I
Fall’s narrative is not only inherently non-cinematic but potentially
deadly to the movie. Who wants to see the same scene presented over and over
again with only small variations? And, although it’s unfair to compare Bill
Murray to Zoey Deutch, a case can be made that Murray’s performance keeps Groundhog Day from slipping into the rut
that derails Before I Fall. For her part, although Deutch (most recently
seen as Bryan Cranston’s daughter/James Franco’s lover in Why Him?) is appealing, she’s too old for the part. Halston Sage
(in the best friend role), who’s
actually a year older than Deutch, seems more age-appropriate for a high school
student. Both are viewed as up and coming
actresses and will likely appear in more impressive projects than this one in
the near future.
The
saccharine message of savor every moment
is driven home with sledgehammer-like subtlety. Director Ry Russo-Young’s unwillingness to give the audience even a
scintilla of credit (a sentiment I can fully understand) results in not only a
voiceover that emphasizes the moral but a final act that embodies it. Somehow, Groundhog Day is able to convey
something similar without it becoming obvious or intrusive. Is it fair to
catalog all the times when the Ramis film does things better than this one?
Possibly not, considering that Before I
Fall has been fine-tuned for viewers who have probably never heard of Groundhog Day, much less seen it. This movie is intended for girls between the
ages of 10 and 16 and anyone outside that demographic is likely to have issues
with parts of the script (or, in my case, pretty much the entire thing).
To
be fair, there are occasional moments that succeed dramatically. These are
typically the quieter, less histrionic ones. I appreciated the scenes between
Samantha and Kent (Logan Miller),
the prototypical nice guy trapped in
the friend zone. There’s also something elegant about the way the movie ends.
Overall, however, the lack of a compelling narrative thrust and inability to
maintain an internal consistency about how the time loop works condemn this
film to a fall from which it can’t recover. [Berardinelli’s rating: 2 stars out
of 4]
Labels:
drama, fantasy, high-school, mystery, romance, teenager, tragedy
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