Post by Dracula on Jan 13, 2021 16:03:53 GMT -5
Words on Bathroom Walls(1/4/2021)
I added Words on Bathroom Walls to my Netflix queue after hearing some vaguely positive things about it without really knowing much about it, which was probably a mistake because I didn’t really realize it was a pretty straight YA romance kind of thing. Not YA in the “dystopian sci-fi” kind of way but more of a “story about a high schooler with a problem gets a girlfriend” kind of thing. It’s about a teenager who is diagnosed as a schizophrenic after having a breakdown in class and ends up switching to a Catholic high school as a result where he meets a girl who catches his fancy and ends up hiring her as a math tutor and this leads to a romance. In the meantime he is also dealing with some time-honored teenage things like hating his stepdad and dodging bullies. There are some likable elements here; particularly the film’s leads Charlie Plummer (no relation to Christopher) and Taylor Russell, and I’d say the visual filmmaking here is also acceptable to good. But man, these coming of age YA things sure do have a rigid formula don’t they? They flatter teenagers by making them seem a lot deeper and more thoughtful than they really are while using quirky techniques (in this case turning his schizophrenic hallucinations into characters) to spice things up and provide a narration device. I’m not familiar enough with mental illness to say whether this portrayal is “accurate” or not but I wouldn’t say it’s overly insightful and as someone who’s too old for this shit, there wasn’t much for me here. That said I’m sure there are younger audiences for whom a lot of this will seem a lot more original and could enjoy this, so I don’t want to come down too hard on it.
**1/2 out of Five
I added Words on Bathroom Walls to my Netflix queue after hearing some vaguely positive things about it without really knowing much about it, which was probably a mistake because I didn’t really realize it was a pretty straight YA romance kind of thing. Not YA in the “dystopian sci-fi” kind of way but more of a “story about a high schooler with a problem gets a girlfriend” kind of thing. It’s about a teenager who is diagnosed as a schizophrenic after having a breakdown in class and ends up switching to a Catholic high school as a result where he meets a girl who catches his fancy and ends up hiring her as a math tutor and this leads to a romance. In the meantime he is also dealing with some time-honored teenage things like hating his stepdad and dodging bullies. There are some likable elements here; particularly the film’s leads Charlie Plummer (no relation to Christopher) and Taylor Russell, and I’d say the visual filmmaking here is also acceptable to good. But man, these coming of age YA things sure do have a rigid formula don’t they? They flatter teenagers by making them seem a lot deeper and more thoughtful than they really are while using quirky techniques (in this case turning his schizophrenic hallucinations into characters) to spice things up and provide a narration device. I’m not familiar enough with mental illness to say whether this portrayal is “accurate” or not but I wouldn’t say it’s overly insightful and as someone who’s too old for this shit, there wasn’t much for me here. That said I’m sure there are younger audiences for whom a lot of this will seem a lot more original and could enjoy this, so I don’t want to come down too hard on it.
**1/2 out of Five
