How to Date Billy Walsh

" How to Date Billy Walsh " is a fun movie. It involves witty dialogue, and the classic trope of a love triangle between three teenagers.

However, it was... hard to watch to say the least.

The main character, Archie, is crude and hard to sympathize with. It's hard to believe that he actually cares for Millie with all of the horrible things he does throughout the movie. The only interesting characterization he has is when he speaks to the audience, and that gets old fast.

The titular Billy Walsh is supposed to be an American bad boy that the English girls swoon over. While his accent is lovely, his character is bland and flat. He has no other personality traits, or motives, behind any of his options. His use in the story is just to be a "foil" to Archie, and that is made clear.

Millie, the girl next door, and Archie's best friend, is the worst characterized out of all of them. Her purpose is to just be in love with whoever it calls for in the movie. She's bland, like a manic pixie dream girl but watered down. While she has a motivation, her mother, it fails to bring any substance to her character.

The movie's plot was boring and overdone, but no idea is original. I could excuse the overdone plot for interesting characters, motives, or really anything of interest. However, we're only met with the same predictable plot twists and endings.

This is a fun movie if you put the cringey moments and poor characterization aside. While I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, it's a nice movie if you've already watched all of Netflix's catalogue.

If the Harry Potter franchise and a Nickelodeon pie-in-the-face bathroom joke-filled movie had a child, this would be it. The movie suffers because of unflattering sex jokes and constant breakage of the fourth wall. It may have been a satire, but the script was very disorderly.

I laughed only once, and ironically it was from a character who got seconds worth of screen time (the restaurant waiter). I did enjoy Charithra Chandran's performance, but she couldn't salvage the overall viewing experience.

It felt like every character was stuck in their own fairy tale universe. Plus the film tried the "influencer" type angle, complete with slow motion scenes and text message bubbles. The ending was mildly cute, but it was too little too late.

How to Date Billy Walsh is a charmless and irritating movie. It is derivative of similar Young Adult rom coms but is a total misfire.

Amelia (Charithra Chandran) and Archie (Sebastian Croft) are childhood best friends. Now both 17 years old, Amelia has never been kissed. While Archie is hopelessly in love with Amelia but cannot confess his true feelings to her.

When cool American biker dude Billy Walsh turns up as a new transfer student. Amelia tells Archie that she has fallen for Billy Walsh. Much to his consternation.

Amelia has competition for Billy's affections. Like all the the glamorous mean girls at school.

Archie pretends to be an advice app called the Love Doctor, to give Amelia advice. Hoping that would keep them apart. Only his advice ends up bringing Amelia and Billy together.

Inept and confusing writing. No chemistry between the leads. This is another rubbish rom com from streaming sites.

I think watchers took it literally. Especially the overdone tropes and the storyline we have seen a million times. If I went into it expecting to watch a "serious" romcom I would leave disappointed but in the same breath the direction the movie was going to take was very clear in the first few minutes and from there it was easy to figure out that it is not going to be as "serious" as one would like it to be.

The exaggeration of the popular tropes and characteristics of the mean girl and her clique, the cool boy, the athletes, and the less popular came off as deliberate, and to me that served as comedic relief rather than actually being bad. I had a lot of "laugh out loud" moments where it was really funny and I liked that the movie carried that same comedic aspect throughout and up until the end as opposed to dropping it mid-movie like most romcoms do. The exaggeration and over-dramatization of these characters and the events that take place IS what makes it funny. It's almost as though the movie was taking a dig at all the worn out highschool romcom tropes.

I really believe that changing your perspective will heavily influence your viewing experience. If you take all the cringy scenes and worn-out concepts and see that they were deliberate and not meant to be taken literally you will have a pleasurable viewing experience.

It was a lighthearted and funny watch. I would recommend it.

I really wanted to like this. The movie has a great cast and, to give them their due, the weakness isn't in the cast performance here, they do a great job with the dire material they have to work with.

There's nothing new or original about the story. It's a poor British attempt to replicate an American high school movie trope that has been told a thousand times. I'm unsure how you can remake a movie that has been made so many times before yet get it so wrong.

I get that the design of the film is supposed to be slightly off the wall, but it borders on cartoonesque. If it not for the occasional swear word or discussion of sex toys, this could be an episode of any Nickelodeon or Disney show.

The characters, writing and story is all paper thin.

I'm really unsure who the audience is for this, it's too adult in content for the tween audience, it's too immature for older young adults, it doesn't have the sarcasm or self-awareness to please an older audience.