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Film Search
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Here is what would happen if Nicholas Sparks rewrote Groundhog Day as a teen-angst melodrama. The same lessons are to be learned, in the same order, only instead of a funny Bill Murray learning them, it’s a brooding Zoey Deutch. To be fair, Deutch gives a committed, nuanced performance that is many degrees better than the film deserves, playing Samantha Kingston, a high school senior who dies one Friday night and then keeps reliving her final day. Seems she was a bit of a mean girl, abetting queen bee Lindsay (Halston Sage) and the others in their clique as they harassed unpopular students, and now she must atone. The premise of reliving one day in a loop might be better suited to teens than grumpy weathermen anyway, given teens’ fondness for nihilism and having problems that no one can relate to, and director Ry Russo-Young (working from Maria Maggenti’s adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s young-adult novel), hits all the beats you expect from a teen drama. But except for Deutch’s mature performance, everything about the film is overly familiar, too mundane to justify its existence.
Official Site: www.beforeifallfilm.com
Director: Ry Russo-Young
Producer: Brian Robbins, Matt Kaplan, Jon Shestack, Brett Bouttier, Robyn Marshall, Lauren Oliver and Marc Bienstock
Cast: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Kian Lawley, Elena Kampouris, Diego Boneta, Jennifer Beals, Cynthy Wu and Medalion Rahimi
Director: Ry Russo-Young
Producer: Brian Robbins, Matt Kaplan, Jon Shestack, Brett Bouttier, Robyn Marshall, Lauren Oliver and Marc Bienstock
Cast: Zoey Deutch, Halston Sage, Logan Miller, Kian Lawley, Elena Kampouris, Diego Boneta, Jennifer Beals, Cynthy Wu and Medalion Rahimi
