The road to the wrought-iron gates of Streaming Hell is often paved with films that, while not bad, are only so-so. Since Netflix paid a handsome $12 million for Cary Koji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation nearly a decade ago, every streaming service under the sun has dumped beaucoup bucks on the next big hit. Inevitably, though, they learned that while it’s often lucrative to court the sure hits, the Glass Onions and Don’t Look Ups of the world, the best strategy is to spend just a few million to churn out original content that might become a surprise hit that brings in fresh eyes and subscribers but won’t leave investors furious if it doesn’t lead to a massive return of investment.
Enter first timer Sammi Cohen’s whip-smart queer teen romcom Crush. Cohen (who would go on to direct last year’s You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah) cut her teeth writing and directing for CollegeHumor, apparently churning out enough top-notch work that it caught the attention of Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne (who produced the film) and Hulu (who saw fit to release it). It was conceived with a very simple, very noble goal in mind: to make a queer story that wasn’t rooted in the miseries and heartbreaks that are part of far too many queer stories told in film. It succeeds, but it also performs an equally valid service: giving young gays the kind of fun, stupid rom-com that the heterosexuals enjoy on a near-constant basis — especially in places like Hulu.
Its premise is, frankly, weak as hell. Perma-anxious gay teen artist Paige (Rowan Blanchard) finds herself an unceremonious scapegoat for the actions of a notorious tagger called KingPun. This artist isn’t Banksy, but their art style — cartoonish, cutesy and, most importantly, pun-based — has made enough of an impact on Miller High (both in terms of distraction and post-graffito clean-up) that it demands the school make an example of somebody. In the moment, she makes a deal: rather than being suspended (thus destroying her chances of getting into the summer program at her dream school, CalArts), she’ll help out the school’s under-populated track team, and get to the bottom of the identity of the notorious KingPun.
Right off the bat, Crush defines itself in one important way: everyone in it is hip as fuck. Paige’s mother, Angie (Megan Mullally), is almost too sex-positive, routinely gifting her lavish $200 Lelo vibrators — despite collecting dust, in-box, on a shelf like a collection of orgasm-inducing Funko Pops — and forcing dental dams on her that glow-in-the-dark “to make her puss glow.” (Halfway through the film, Angie asks Paige and her friends if they want to bring any poppers with them, which she has in her car. Seriously.) When we meet her best friend, the oversexed straight boy Dillon (American Vandal’s Tyler Alvarez), he jokes that Spotify emailed him an alert that she’d spent eight hours listening to the two albums of Phoebe Bridgers. “Sad lesbian music is an integral part of my identity,” says Paige, who had just changed out of a girl in red shirt. These teens party, smoke weed and drink together, but they don’t blow anything up or break anything. They still play Seven Minutes in Heaven, but the tension of non-straight sexualities never causes friction. This is a film that exists firmly in a post-Schitt’s Creek world, where homophobia is an afterthought and queerness is treated as business-as-usual. This is the flipside of Euphoria, as well, where the debauchery and bacchanalia of youth is part of the joy of growing up, rather than a gateway to nightmarish abuse and trauma.
As you can guess by the goofiness of the “a teen is arbitrarily accused of being a prolific vandal and proves her innocence through track and detective work” plot, this movie is thin and dumb, but it’s elevated by the performances and their chemistry. We’re set up well for a lot of charming lesbian hijinks, with Paige’s love interests being the co-captains of the track team: her childhood crush, Gabriela (Isabella Ferreira), and her much cooler (but less popular) twin sister, AJ, played by Moana Waialiki of Motunui herself, Auliʻi Cravalho. The film tries to build up Gabriela as a much more impactful crush for Paige, but the moment AJ shows up, it melts away enough that the “having a crush on two different women” angle feels a bit flimsy. The arc of their romance is the opposite of groundbreaking, especially for a teen movie; it doesn’t end at prom or anything, but there are declarations of love and happy resolutions for everybody, which, honestly, is all anybody wants from these kinds of movies, right?
If you watch enough romcoms, especially bad romcoms, you’ll learn that there are many different tiers of “bad romcom” than a layman might think. Not everybody can make When Harry Met Sally or Sleepless in Seattle, but not everyone can scrape the bottom of the barrel with films like Gigli or Shallow Hal, either. Crush falls into a very specific category: the “bad, but great for a sick day” romcom, that allows you to float in and out of it without feeling like you’ve missed too much. It’s light and inoffensive enough, and even when it gets a little extra weird, like the recurring scenes where Angie plays hard-to-get with Paige’s very flirty track coach (Aasif Mandvi), its flavors aren’t strong enough to feel overpowering. Is it predictable? Absolutely — even without seeing it, you may have already figured out who the notorious KingPun is — but the point isn’t to throw you curveballs. The purpose for Crush is to be a symbol of the inalienable right of all people to be granted the meaningless streaming romance schlock that each of us deserves.
The post From the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Crush appeared first on Spectrum Culture.