Let me start out by saying I am a HUGE romance fan. Especially with stories about young love. Breaking rules, defying parents, all those cliched romance tropes. When I saw the trailer for this one, I was genuinely looking forward to it. I thought it was pretty original for the main character to not really defy his parents but his best friends with falling in love with his love interest. The only thing that worried me was that it contained the whole "liar revealed" cliche that I just can't stand. Having seen it now, it's actually worse than I thought. First of all, his friends are CLEARLY bad influencers and he seems so different from them that it's a wonder why he hangs out with them at all. Then they decide to play this juvenile prank of snatch and run where they steal people's property from their houses and end up getting his love interest's brother killed. He tries to do the sensible thing and stay with him and possibly get help but his so-called "friends" convince him once again to just ditch him. Then he starts getting cozy with the female lead and it was nothing short of frustrating. The whole time I was practically screaming at the screen wanting him to tell her the truth about her brother but of course he never does until towards the end. It makes it hard to get behind the chemistry and love that they share because he's lying to her. And it just makes him look like a terrible person for getting close to her. Then his friends decide to have a redemption arc which the film clearly tries hard to give them but they've been such asses throughout the film that I just couldn't care less. But probably the most confusing part is that by the very end of the film we see him as an adult, now apparently married with a son. And for some reason he's still thinking about his first love. What does it matter at that point? He's years past it and he's apparently gotten over it because he now has a family. How do you think they would feel if they knew you were still thinking about your first love? On the up side, the acting is absolutely amazing and the actors really committed to it. So sadly I'll have to give this one a thumbs down, so to speak. Should have been better, had potential, but couldn't escape being boring and frustrating.
Review of All Summers End
