This movie's marketing team was the real miracle. The trailer, despite effectively spoiling the entire film, intrigued me and painted this as a potentially decent sports drama. If I ever make a hack job sports movie, I guess I'll have to run it through LD Entertainment.
We have a promising opening scene explaining how Caroline (Danika Yarosh), the girl who tragically dies in a moped accident, is an adventurous spirit who has a fun and uplifting effect on all those around her, and how she makes everything fun for everyone. Cool. The main problem is that Caroline, who is alive for I would guess about 20-30 minutes of screen time, is the only one of our main characters with a defined personality. Once she's gone and her mourning (a series of scenes which were somehow not handled well enough to elicit any sort of emotional response from me or my girlfriend) is complete, we're stuck with Kelly (Erin Moriarty) as our main protagonist. Moriarty's performance is the saddest thing in this film after Caroline's death (which is only sad because the girl actually died in real life, not because of any decent film making here.) There are several scenes where you can actually see Moriarty pull a face or summon up tears. Everything she says sounds stilted, her expressions forced. But maybe it's not all her fault.
Actors can't save bad writing (most of the time). This film has HORRIBLE writing. Not only is every line that comes out of our poorly acted heroines' mouths seemingly a cliche of some sort, the ones that aren't are laughably awful. My girlfriend isn't even very critical of movies most of the time, and even she had to burst out into silent laughter in the middle of the theater at how horrible the dialogue here is. Nobody talks like the characters in this movie. Not teenage girls, not anybody. Even the adults' dialogue is soppy garbage.Furthermore, it seems like the screenwriter forgot how to develop characters. There are multiple times in the movie where a character will take a major action or make a big decision, and I was left wondering "Huh? When did she make up her mind to do that? What has she been thinking? Where did this come from?" The movie paints Kelly and the rest of the West High Volleyball team as going through massive emotional trauma and struggle, yet the movie's efforts to give us a sense of that particular battle are woefully inadequate at best, nonexistent at worst. The only thing I would say to describe the change is Kelly between the start and the end of the movie is that she's sadder at the end. That's about it. I guess she also has a boyfriend with the personality of a cardboard cutout. So she's got that going for her.
The worst part is the pacing. The lack of displayed struggle and character development contribute to an overall tone that just feels... rushed. It's as if the writers were just trying to get through the beats of the story as quickly as they possibly could, with no regard for making it interesting or gripping. The one bright spot here is Coach Kathy Bresnahan (Helen Hunt), but her handful of serviceable scenes aren't enough to salvage this mess. The process of the team getting to state feels too quick and easy for it to be the arduous battle that it is portrayed as. Even once the team is playing at state, the random cut ins of pop songs in climactic scenes ruin the tension and drama of the scenes, feeling more like an effort to seem "cool" than a legitimate decision to make the film better. It's a shame too, because the volleyball sequences were some of the better shot scenes in a movie with otherwise incredibly bland cinematography.
All in all, this film is shallow in every aspect. Flat characters, horrible, uncreative cinematography, predictable beats, and rushed pacing. Even the orchestral score is bland and never fits the action. This movie is a disservice to the story it is trying to tell. It is rushed, slapped together, and possibly the worst movie I have seen in a couple years (and I saw God's Not Dead 3). Avoid at all costs.
We have a promising opening scene explaining how Caroline (Danika Yarosh), the girl who tragically dies in a moped accident, is an adventurous spirit who has a fun and uplifting effect on all those around her, and how she makes everything fun for everyone. Cool. The main problem is that Caroline, who is alive for I would guess about 20-30 minutes of screen time, is the only one of our main characters with a defined personality. Once she's gone and her mourning (a series of scenes which were somehow not handled well enough to elicit any sort of emotional response from me or my girlfriend) is complete, we're stuck with Kelly (Erin Moriarty) as our main protagonist. Moriarty's performance is the saddest thing in this film after Caroline's death (which is only sad because the girl actually died in real life, not because of any decent film making here.) There are several scenes where you can actually see Moriarty pull a face or summon up tears. Everything she says sounds stilted, her expressions forced. But maybe it's not all her fault.
Actors can't save bad writing (most of the time). This film has HORRIBLE writing. Not only is every line that comes out of our poorly acted heroines' mouths seemingly a cliche of some sort, the ones that aren't are laughably awful. My girlfriend isn't even very critical of movies most of the time, and even she had to burst out into silent laughter in the middle of the theater at how horrible the dialogue here is. Nobody talks like the characters in this movie. Not teenage girls, not anybody. Even the adults' dialogue is soppy garbage.Furthermore, it seems like the screenwriter forgot how to develop characters. There are multiple times in the movie where a character will take a major action or make a big decision, and I was left wondering "Huh? When did she make up her mind to do that? What has she been thinking? Where did this come from?" The movie paints Kelly and the rest of the West High Volleyball team as going through massive emotional trauma and struggle, yet the movie's efforts to give us a sense of that particular battle are woefully inadequate at best, nonexistent at worst. The only thing I would say to describe the change is Kelly between the start and the end of the movie is that she's sadder at the end. That's about it. I guess she also has a boyfriend with the personality of a cardboard cutout. So she's got that going for her.
The worst part is the pacing. The lack of displayed struggle and character development contribute to an overall tone that just feels... rushed. It's as if the writers were just trying to get through the beats of the story as quickly as they possibly could, with no regard for making it interesting or gripping. The one bright spot here is Coach Kathy Bresnahan (Helen Hunt), but her handful of serviceable scenes aren't enough to salvage this mess. The process of the team getting to state feels too quick and easy for it to be the arduous battle that it is portrayed as. Even once the team is playing at state, the random cut ins of pop songs in climactic scenes ruin the tension and drama of the scenes, feeling more like an effort to seem "cool" than a legitimate decision to make the film better. It's a shame too, because the volleyball sequences were some of the better shot scenes in a movie with otherwise incredibly bland cinematography.
All in all, this film is shallow in every aspect. Flat characters, horrible, uncreative cinematography, predictable beats, and rushed pacing. Even the orchestral score is bland and never fits the action. This movie is a disservice to the story it is trying to tell. It is rushed, slapped together, and possibly the worst movie I have seen in a couple years (and I saw God's Not Dead 3). Avoid at all costs.