Hulu’s latest rom-com, Crush, is directed by Sammi Cohen with a screenplay from Kristen King and Casey Rackham. The film stars Rowan Blanchard, Auli’i Cravalho, Isabella Ferreira, Tyler Alvarez, Megan Mullally and, has a runtime of 93 minutes.
– Hulu’s Crush Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers –
Crush: What is it with predictable, unfunny romantic comedies?
It is not only disappointing but, also truly angering to a point that they don’t really make cute, funny, impressionable romantic comedies anymore. Every other piece of cinema labelled under the genre of rom-com is either too predictable and boring that you will lose interest in the first go or, overtly horny that would make you want to get ’em off your screen or downright disrespectful and uneducated about the community or people it is representing. Well, Hulu’s Crush ticks all the aforementioned boxes.
Our protagonist is an aspiring artist in high school with the perfect mother, a straight guy best friend to her match up to her gay identity and, a crush on the high school’s one of the prettiest looking, popular girls, who is way too out of her league, apparently. Well, meet Paige! But, it isn’t long before her seemingly perfect yet relatable situation is tampered with when she is forced to join the school’s track team. However, the experience starts to look less jarring when Paige finds out that Gabby, her long-time crush, is too in the team.
As Paige finally lands her one true chance to get closer to her crush, her heart starts to flutter for someone completely new. This new development only leads to complicate things in Paige’s life. How things roll out for her in the rest of the movie is something quite typical and predictable that happens in teen romantic comedies.
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After Netflix’s Heartstopper, the expectations for a queer love story set against the backdrop of a high school seem to be pretty high. Is that why Crush fails to impress? Well, not exactly. Both our main character, her friends and, even the girl that has had liked forever don’t have any depth. Everything happens at a rather superficial level starting from the first kiss to Paige finally realizing who she is actually in love with to her friends- Dillon and Stacey- making out. Dillon and Paige’s friendship, which could have lent depth to the story is not even explored properly.
The script sure knows how to have a little fun but, it does not exactly come off as funny most of the time, which is disappointing because with a predictable plot the best for the makers to impress the audience is with the comic elements. But, apart from Paige’s random animal facts, the only fun thing might just be Megan Mullally’s performance as Paige’s mother. As much as we all love Rowan Blanchard and, have always been left happy with her performances, this film is just a simple miss that cannot be salvaged.
Crush: Final Verdict
Overall, Crush is a film that you can most definitely skip. Much like Hulu’s last original romantic comedy film, Sex Appeal, this film too does not have much to offer. Not only misses to give you all the butterflies in your stomach like films like Happiest Season, The Half of It and Love, Simon have been capable of in today’s world, it also does not offer you a good laugh or set of performances and characters that you can applaud or root for. At the best, the film can be called mediocre and, unsurprising.
You can watch the film, Crush, now on Hulu.