By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Stella Meghie
Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Nick Robinson, Anika Noni Rose, Ana de la Reguera, Taylor Hickson, Danube Hermosillo, Dany Payne, Fiova Loewi and Françoise Yip.
Rating: Poor.
Stella Meghie, director of “Jean of the Joneses” brings her second feature film: “Everything, Everything” and I haven´t see a movie in the genre so predictable than this one.
Based on the novel by Nicola Yoon, the movie tells the story of Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg) a girl who is confined on her home with a strange disease.
Her life will change when she see´s her new neighbor Olly (Nick Robinson) a boy who immediately has an attraction towards her.
Despite of knowing Maddy´s condition, Olly will teach the real meaning of life and to cherish every single moment of it no matter in what condition are you in.
One of the major problems that I saw in “Everything, Everything” was the narrative of the film.
The screenplay written by J. Mills Goodloe who has written movies of this genre like “The Age of Adaline” and “The Best of Me” has again dialogue that was to much on the nose and it was filled by cliché moments.
Some of the moments of the film didn´t make any sense since they give pieces of information and then it doesn´t match to some of the things that were previously mentioned.
The use of the voiceover was totally wrong and for characters of this films that yes, they are filled with internal conflict with action is the best way to portray it. I wanted to see how she contracted the disease instead of telling it.
The direction by Stella Meghie was not that precise and the performances from the crew except from Ana de la Reguera were not convincing at all.
The performers try to hard to make their characters believable but they failed at all times. The sequences that involve an astronaut were too repetitive and honestly I felt this movie took forever despite of the length.
I admire the fact that Stella Meghie took a chance on directing new faces in Hollywood and that is very admirable but the key is to do it with a good screenplay and unfortunately this wasn´t the case.
I do think the movie could have been an interesting one if more time would have been invested in story but this wasn´t the case and I felt that I was watching a teen tv show from the nineties with too much drama that was not well established.
The cast of this film I see them that I have huge potential and of course a big future but I hope they choose their next projects wisely.
With that being said “Everything, Everything” is one of the cheesiest and predictable dramas I´ve seen in a while and I cannot recommend it for the direction, performances and the poorly executed screenplay.