Caught a free preview screening of Before I Fall, a film a cynical person might call “Groundhog Day for Teens”. I am a cynical person. It was Groundhog Day for Teens… only serious-minded and dramatic and full of real life teen concerns. And Mean Girls. And our hero was a Mean Girl because all of these movies have to take a selfish, cowardly, or bad person and send them through looping days until they become a better person. Most recently, Tom Cruise did that in Edge of Tomorrow so it’s not like its even been long between mainstream theatrical films with the premise.
To be fair, Groundhog Day is an old movie (and I feel old for saying that) so a teen version of it might be the first pass many in the target demographic might see (and its based on an apparently popular YA novel of the same name).
Our main character is a self-centered Mean Girl who proceeds to only get more annoying and unlikable as the film progresses. She gets her equivalent of stealing the groundhog and outracing the cops in one loop only at least when Murray did that it was funny and when Cruise did it, we kind of understood why he had had enough of dying. But here she’s just an even Meaner Girl and it gets downright insufferable.
But it’s all in service of letting her have her one day when she figures out the key to ending the loop. Which appears to be as deep as being a better person to your parents, your sister, your Mean Girl friends, and the girl who you and your friends bullied. And there’s a bullshit ending which I won’t spoil that basically ruins the one good loop but is supposed to be profound.
When she wasn’t a horrible person, I kind of liked the lead actress (Zoey Deutsch). I’ve seen her before in Why Him?, Vampire Academy, and Beautiful Creatures but she actually made an impression on me here. Ironic its for a character I didn’t like most of the time.
I gather this film is coming out in April and I’d advise skipping it. In between the character being unlikable, the film is full of turgid, boring teen soap dramatics and repetitious supposedly meaningful dialog (and voice overs). When I wasn’t irritated, I was bored. Skip it and maybe see it on cable for the few small moments where it’s good… and if you have to see all the repeating day movies and tv episodes to be a completionist.
Score: 69