I'll admit that my initial interest was with the weird typecasting of Brianna Hildebrand in yet another role where she's time-travelling. The curse of having a baby-face, I suppose.
But once that curiosity had been satisfied, I was left with the entire rest of the movie, which... yikes. Best way I can sum it up is "yikes." There are movies where you can tell the writers are male, and this is absolutely one of them. Our two main female characters are, respectively, the "wife that the main character resents being tied to, and thus as the movie progresses becomes more and more of an outright harpy to justify his waning interest," and "literally teenager who obviously reciprocates the attraction this middle-aged man is feeling for her, as a ham-handed way to try and make it less horrifying when he pursues her."
The premise seemed like a whole lot of justification to make it seem acceptable for a "just turned 18" 18 year old to be in a relationship with a middle-aged man. While the ending, at the very last moment, veered away from being as gross as it certainly had the potential to be, I was left with only one pressing question - Who on earth was this movie made for?
Hard to make an argument that the target audience is anything other than aging men who want a fantasy of leaving their aging wives to pursue younger women and recapture their lost youth, and wow, do we not need any more movies catering to them. The whole thing left me feeling disgruntled and disgusted. The messaging was appalling, the worldbuilding shabby, the pacing was BAD, and the only likeable character was the token black friend - who was clearly so bored with his small-town life that stirring up drama with the main characters seemed to be not just a recurring coincidence, but his outright passion.
1/10. Do not recommend.
But once that curiosity had been satisfied, I was left with the entire rest of the movie, which... yikes. Best way I can sum it up is "yikes." There are movies where you can tell the writers are male, and this is absolutely one of them. Our two main female characters are, respectively, the "wife that the main character resents being tied to, and thus as the movie progresses becomes more and more of an outright harpy to justify his waning interest," and "literally teenager who obviously reciprocates the attraction this middle-aged man is feeling for her, as a ham-handed way to try and make it less horrifying when he pursues her."
The premise seemed like a whole lot of justification to make it seem acceptable for a "just turned 18" 18 year old to be in a relationship with a middle-aged man. While the ending, at the very last moment, veered away from being as gross as it certainly had the potential to be, I was left with only one pressing question - Who on earth was this movie made for?
Hard to make an argument that the target audience is anything other than aging men who want a fantasy of leaving their aging wives to pursue younger women and recapture their lost youth, and wow, do we not need any more movies catering to them. The whole thing left me feeling disgruntled and disgusted. The messaging was appalling, the worldbuilding shabby, the pacing was BAD, and the only likeable character was the token black friend - who was clearly so bored with his small-town life that stirring up drama with the main characters seemed to be not just a recurring coincidence, but his outright passion.
1/10. Do not recommend.