Ma Meilleure Rivale

In a - hopefully temporary - phase of ethusiasm for teen rom-comedies (about teens! not for teens...) I stumbled into this movie and I have to say it was really good: lighthearted, fresh and funny.

Yeah, nothing really original: a lot of the genre tropes are there... but still mostly done with competence, attention to detail and heart. Which is rare for the genre.

It's not a masterpiece but I don't see how anyone could be disappointed.

April and nick had a pretty long term thing, for high school kids! But that ended. And now another girl is dating nick. April thinks she's going to hate her, but they actually become friends. Although it's killing april, knowing that clara is banging the delicious nick. With whom she still seems to be in lust, or love. Or something. She does tell us that nick was her first! Lots of millenial cell phone stuff, googling, lots of vaping. Girl talk, guy talk. Teen angst. Which relationships will survive? The girls' friendship? Or nick and....who ? Graduation day is sometimes so....final. Directed by benjamin kasulke. He's won a bunch of film fest awards. Apparently this was really someone's life experience. Probably happens pretty frequently, actually! Cute, simple film, nothing too serious.

It took a while to get a release for this movie and after watching it I was surprised because I did't expect that much. It is a fun movie. It asks a simple but interesting question. Can the girlfriend and the ex-girlfriend of the same guy be friends? Of course it about more than that. It is a coming of age story. It is about friendship, the value of honesty the fear of growing up and all that good stuff.

Is it predictable, yes it is. But this is not "Inception" so there is nothing wrong with having a plot where things play out like they usually do in order get the message across.

It has two falws. II never believe the relationship of Hannah Marks and Dylan Sprouse. They have no chemistry together so they either hated each other on set or loved each other which often makes for bad chemistry. Sprouse actually is actually the weak link of the four "friends".

For me those two are the only flaws and they don't matter that much because it is mostly about Hannah Marks and Liana Liberato. And their chemistry is great. I believe their friendship and they make this movie fun to watch.

This is a good movie about two teenage girls developing what could become one of the important friendships of their lives. But there is a major wrinkle which could blow up this budding relationship. Clara is dating Nick, April's ex and April still has strong feelings for him. The best and most convincing stretch of the movie is the segment in which April's feelings of jealous rage slowly and unwillingly morph into the realization that Clara is really cool and nice and has more in common with April than anyone else she has ever met. So the girls become best friends and try to keep this secret from Nick. This seems unlikely to work at all in the age of social media, but at the director's Q&A, he said that the film, written by Hannah Marks, who plays April, was in fact semi-autobiographical.

Interesting, unique, refreshing and funny. Would recommend.