![]() The film is bloated with cutaways of the city skyline, subways, bridges, and streets. It's aw shucks cute, but aren't all romances goofy in the beginning?ĭirector Ry Russo-Young ( Before I Fall) should be hired by the New York tourism board. They are looking for something to believe in. The two characters, from different races, backgrounds, and ideologies are wistful at heart. The Sun Is Also a Star isn't remotely in that league, but develops their relationship successfully. This set-up is awfully similar to Richard Linklater's classic Before Sunrise. She's got bigger things to worry about than romance. She thinks he's cute with a whole lot of confidence, but clearly mistaken. He promises to make her fall in love with him. Daniel and Natasha couldn't be more different in their personalities and interests. The Sun Is Also a Star is an opposites attract story. He follows Natasha, kicking off a whirlwind day in the big city. Daniel decides that this cannot be a coincidence. She's wearing a jacket that says "Deus Ex Machina", which just happens to be the title of a poem he was struggling to write. Daniel is en route to his Dartmouth interview when he glimpses the beautiful Natasha at Grand Central Station. The pressure has increased exponentially after his older brother's (Jake Choi) failure. They have groomed him to be a doctor since childhood. A poet at heart, his stern parents are forcing him to attend Dartmouth College. Then again, all those things seem so profound and meaningful at that age.Charles Melton co-stars as Daniel Bae, a first generation Korean-American from Queens. ![]() The dialogue (the script is by Tracy Oliver) just grinds things to a halt, with speeches that are a bit too on the nose, and too-grand declarations of love. But then, they open their mouths and the spell is broken. "Give me a day," he says, "and you'll fall in love with me."Įasy for the easy-on-the-eyes Melton to say! Shahidi and Melton both possess an otherworldly kind of beauty, and combined with Russo-Young's lush, rhythmic cinematic style, you could just watch them bop around the city for hours, all shiny hair and plush lips. First he saves her from a speeding BMW in Chinatown, then persuades the science-driven Natasha to spend some time doing the "36 Questions" love study from the New York Times. Daniel is a poet, a dreamer and believer in destiny, and he takes off after her. She's spotted in Grand Central Station by Daniel "Riverdale" star Charles Melton), who notices she's staring at the starry ceiling, and he interprets her "Deus Ex Machina" jacket as a sign. The day before her family is set to be deported back to Jamaica, she makes a last-ditch attempt to change their fate by pleading their case to an immigration lawyer. Yara Shahidi (of "black-ish" and "grown-ish") stars as Natasha, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants but a New Yorker through and through. ![]() But the stakes are high and the clock is ticking - on a mandatory deportation from the United States. And in the structural sense, "The Sun is Also a Star" is also a sick teen movie - without sickness. The sick teen genre is a well of deep potential with its heightened stakes and ticking clock. Her first, "Everything, Everything," also went on to success as a movie adaptation, starring Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson in a swoony take on a Bubble Boy story. The film is the feature adaptation of Nicola Yoon's second novel. She creates a heady, knee-buckling mood that nearly conceals the weaknesses in story and performances. In "The Sun is Also a Star," Russo-Young swirls together sun-dappled selfies, luscious skin, urban grittiness and hip-hop beats, the aesthetics perfectly matched to emotion. Director Ry Russo-Young excels at rendering those emotions with a singular sense of artfulness. It seems its big, sweeping emotions are somehow the only things that can match the high-stakes, hormone-enhanced teenage feelings.
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