![]() ![]() Tomorrow, her family will return to Jamaica, which is technically her homeland but not her home. But unfortunately, The Sun Is Also A Star fell far short of my expectations, offering a romance that never manages to shine.ĭirected by Before I Fall helmer Ry Russo-Young, The Sun Is Also A Star begins with 17-year-old Natasha Kingsley (Shahidi), an aspiring scientist who fears her life and career ambitions will be derailed because of her parents’ impending deportation. Bonus: it stars Grown-ish’s Yara Shahidi and Riverdale’s Charles Melton, two performers who’ve shown a compelling charisma on their respective series. Plus, this one was based on a YA novel by Nicola Yoon, the author behind Everything Everything, an adaptation that had me swooning. ![]() I’m a sucker for an even half-decent romance, and as a long-time New Yorker can’t get enough of seeing love stories spilled across our boroughs. A hopeless romantic meets a hard-nosed realist, and together they fall in love while making New York City their playground. Two stars out of four.On paper, The Sun Is Also A Star looked like the kind of movie I’d totally fall for. release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for “some suggestive content and language.” Running time: 100 minutes. The sparks are few in this labored romance.Īlso, I’m pretty sure he can study poetry at Dartmouth. It would certainly be interesting if he was supposed to be a kind of poseur using those markers as a way to woo women, but this film is too earnest for that. I never really bought into him as the aspiring poet/romantic he keeps claiming to be. Shahidi, despite the implausibility of her character actually agreeing to hang out with this handsome stranger, is really wonderful as the skeptical, determined Natasha, and is a clear movie star in the making. The film wants to be a kind of “Before Sunrise” with a dash of “Serendipity.” Sadly, notwithstanding the evident care that the filmmaker took, quality-wise it veers more toward the “Serendipity” side of things with a lot of contrivances presented like fate. Maybe it’s Daniel’s dreaminess, or a way of compartmentalizing or distracting herself from the reality of deportation (and having to pack and help her family), but she lets herself be reckless, and the two set off on an adventure in their city that she at least knows has an expiration date. Why she goes along with it is a bit of a mystery. ![]() ![]() He even works up the courage to propose that he can make her fall in love with him in a day. So, in the grand movie tradition of “it’s not stalking if she’s into it,” he does what any lovelorn high school poet who’d rather be doing anything but interviewing for Dartmouth would do: He follows her.Ī fairly dramatic opportunity arises for Daniel to introduce himself and have an excuse to hang around her to make sure she’s OK. This is important because Natasha, whom he insists he spotted in the crowd not just because she is gorgeous but because “no one ever looks up,” is wearing a jacket with the words “Deus Ex Machina” on the back. He also, with strained plaintiveness, scribbles “Deus Ex Machina” in a notebook. You know this because in his room he has a newspaper clipping of an article about Maya Angelou and an Emily Dickinson book on his shelf. He’s feeling stifled by his Korean immigrant parents, who decided long ago that he’d be a doctor, when he really just wants to be a poet (seriously). It’s there she catches the eye of one Daniel Bae (Melton), a high school student on his way to an alumni interview for Dartmouth that he doesn’t want to go to. Running around the city, she’s also on a reluctant farewell tour, taking an extra beat here and there to really absorb her surroundings - like stopping to gaze up wistfully at the ceiling of Grand Central Terminal. We meet her on the day before their scheduled deportation, as she rushes to a meeting at the immigration office and then, in desperation, to another “last shot” plea with a lawyer who has been known to do miracles. She considers New York her home, so much so that she’s decided to fight the system against all odds and to the last second, even though her parents are resigned to leaving. Shahidi plays Natasha Kingsley, a high school student whose family is facing imminent deportation to Jamaica. And both parties involved in said romance have other things going on in their lives that are much more compelling than their love-at-first-sight. That makes it all the more frustrating, then, that the driving engine behind the film - a whirlwind 24-hour romance - is contrived, underwhelming and perhaps worst of all, unconvincing. Director Ry Russo-Young’s film is shot by cinematographer Autumn Durald with such precision it’s impossible not to get a little swoony over the fact that the filmmaker clearly did not phone it in for this adaptation of a popular young adult book. ![]()
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