Premise: A young woman navigates a rudderless life over a year, working through a few relationships in the process.
I was curious about this movie as a family affair. It was written by Madelyn Deutch and directed by her mother, Lea Thompson. It stars Thomson, Madelyn, and Thompson's other daughter Zoey Deutch. When a family has this much of a presence in a movie, that either means it's a deeply personal film or they had to call in family to get it made at all. Sadly, this leans toward the latter case.
This movie mainly works because of the movies that did the same thing better. It's a really familiar movie. Its favorability coasted on how much it made me think is similar movies that I liked. It's a little more interesting by being a female lead rather than a male lead, but there are plenty of those arrested-development coming-of-age stories out there too. I like the basic DNA of this kind of movie, so it was easy for me to appreciate the broad strokes of this. This is not a movie I disliked.
I'm less familiar with Madelyn Deutch than her younger sister. Simply put, I do think Zoey is the more talented actress and would've made more sense in the lead role. I've seen her as a character with Cheetos in her hair before and she does it better. I kept trying to come up with who would work better in Zoey's role in the movie as well. An Eliza Coupe type is the best I could do. Zoey's strength is not being uptight, which the role often required. That said, there is obvious chemistry between the sisters and their mother on screen. Very often, it felt like they were playing variations of a familiar dynamic. My favorite parts were when it was some mix of those three and no one else.
The main character, Izzy, isn't as endearing as the movie seems to think she is, nor does it really sell me on how memorable the relationships are. The interview with all the guys she dates suggest she was this unique, interesting person that they shared a connection with, but Nicholas Braun was the only person she had any chemistry with. We only catch the sour parts of the Jesse Bradford relationship. She spends most of the year in her room doing nothing. I'm not sure where this character the guys keep talking about is. She's perhaps too unmotivated and unaware of the opportunities she has. She's in college, seemingly long past when she should've graduated. She decides to move to L.A. on a whim, where she mooches off he sister's success. She gets auditions through connections with her sister. She sustains herself with a job as her sister's assistant. It's great that she ends the movie by realizing this is only the beginning of her story, but that means I just spend 90 minutes watching a movie about a fully unformed character.
And, it's frustrating how determined this was to not have a "Hollywood ending". The way that the relationship between her and Braun ends is so perfunctory. The whole ending is, really. I feel like the idea for the movie was that Izzy has this diary that ends up being a book of relationships over a year. Then, as Deutch wrote the screenplay, that idea became less important but she was still determined to keep that as the ending. I just do think it's needed. Take out all the stuff about the journal/book and the movie is exactly the same.
I surprised myself with how much I had to say about this movie. It's that special kind of frustrating where I can squint and see a movie I'd really like. It's a lightweight, easy-to-watch movie. I'd be curious to see a Madelyn Deutch screenplay that wasn't developed with such a close connection to her family. I need to see her in more to buy into her as an actress.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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