Sierra Burgess Is a Loser (2018)

September 13, 2018 11:32 PM

A case of mistaken identity results in unexpected romance when the most popular girl in high school and the biggest loser must come together to win over their crushes.
posted by ellieBOA (8 comments total)

I don't know what I can say about this critically having not experienced this life stage as a girl, but I thought it was a sweet movie and Shannon Purser is utterly amazing. If she doesn't end up becoming "a thing," I'll be very cross with moviemaking writ large.
posted by Krazor at 6:19 AM on September 14, 2018

I loved the music/scoring - the combo of that with having 80s teen movie icons Lea Thompson and Alan Ruck as Sierra’s parents, and Purser’s Stranger Things vibe gave the whole thing a retro feel despite the modern aspect of catfishing via technology for the Cyrano plot.

The friendship that developed between Sierra and Veronica was probably my favorite part of the movie, so I’m kinda conflicted about the ending. Sierra gets forgiven by her and by Jamey whiplash-inducingly fast. Much as I want happily-ever-afters in my rom-coms, I think the screenplay needed to make her actions less horrible or make her redemption/atonement arc or actions more significant.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:20 AM on September 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh, also, I could barely read most of the phone text conversations. One of the interviews/reviews I read had the director saying how he didn’t want to shoot the chats with special graphic effects like so many other movies do, to keep it looking more realistic, but, throw me a bone dude and put the camera closer to the phone or something, my child-of-the80s-eyes are starting to fail me on tiny print.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:26 AM on September 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I couldn't read the phone text either on my tiny non-TV screen, and ultimately that was the reason I gave up about twenty minutes in because I was tired of figuring out what was going on via context. That's a severe directorial fail that should have been figured out, especially since I'd been enjoying it up until then.
posted by paisley sheep at 11:26 AM on September 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am not a fan. As far as I can tell the life lessons we are supposed to learn is that being beautiful is hard, beautiful people are honest and trustworthy, ugly people are conniving catfishers and that sexual assault is ok if you want it bad enough.

I was squicked out by the movie basically the whole time. Disappointing, because I am a big fan of these Netflix high school rom-coms most of the time.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:56 PM on September 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't know; I found it kind of charming. I guess the plot is pretty icky, yeah, but I guess my expectations weren't high. It's obviously a cheap Cyrano adaptation, and thus the entire point is deceiving a romantic partner. But there something so likable about Shannon Purser. She's magnetic. She made up for the movie's flaws, and I want to see her in more features roles now.
posted by kevinbelt at 12:29 PM on October 7, 2018

It's strange - I think all the 1980's trappings of the movie somehow tapped into teenage-brain me that watched all those 80's teen comedy/rom-coms completely oblivious to their sexism/racism/homophobia, the me that watched "Revenge of the Nerds" umpteen times on cable without being bothered by the 'sex in the funhouse' scene. The way everybody forgave Sierra so quickly at the end kinda snapped me out of it, but, the movie did work on me while I was watching it up to that point.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:58 PM on October 7, 2018

I really wanted to like this but it was so offensive and self-destructive in a million ways.
posted by iamkimiam at 5:13 PM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]