I realise a lot of people have been complaining about this movie, but it frustrated me so much. The latest rom-com installation from Netflix has killed their streak of amazingly popular movies. Sierra Burgess is a Loser killed the Netflix rom-com era and I'm pissed.
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** There are many issues with Sierra Burgess is a Loser. Too many. I'm probably being over dramatic but this movie brought the summer of 2018 to a grinding halt, so no wonder people hated it. You'd think this movie would be amazing with actors like Shannon Purser (Barb from Stranger Things) and Noah Centineo (Peter Kavinsky from To All The Boys I've Loved Before) and a great message of 'Just Be You', and this movie created a lot of hype. Who doesn't love a story about a loser girl beating the high school cliques and falling in love? But this movie was not like this at all. The title character, Sierra (Purser), is extremely unlikeable, especially by the end of the movie. At first she seems alright - the movie begins with her character looking in the mirror and saying "You are a magnificent beast" - but from the minute she begins talking to Jamey (Centineo) she begins a downhill spiral that ended with me feeling disgust towards her. The main premise of this movie is that Jamey meets Veronica, a bitchy cheerleader, who gives him Sierra's number pretending it's her own to get him to back off. He starts texting Sierra and she reciprocates, however she realises very quickly that he thinks he is talking to someone else. But she decides to keep texting him. She then finds out that he thinks she is Veronica so enlists her to help trick Jamey, afraid that he won't like her because she isn't a blonde, skinny cheerleader. When it is revealed that she was catfishing him, he breaks it off and then later forgives her for seemingly no reason (but we'll get onto that later). The reason Sierra is so unlikeable is that she carries on this charade, hurting Jamey, ditching her best friend, screwing over Veronica and when it all blows up in her face she receives no consequences for her problems. Plus she justifies that she did this stuff because she's slightly overweight and her mum isn't. It is clear what the character was trying to show - body insecurities leading to social anxiety and going to extreme lengths - but it was portrayed in a way that almost made a mockery of people that deal with these insecurities. They aren't an excuse for catfishing, sabotage and revenge porn, which is what this movie suggests. What should be a story that makes us feel sorry for the main character who is an underdog, left me cheering for the stereotypical pretty cheerleader (not that this isn't a good thing) and hating the underdog. And the fact that Sierra seems to have to deal with no consequences and is forgiven easily leaves no room for the character to learn from her mistakes. Apart from the unlikeable character, the movie seems to promote some things that are morally questionable. Catfishing being the main one. Now, as Nev and Max have shown us on MTV, catfishing never ends well. Someone always gets hurt, either the catfish or the one being catfished or both. Yet Netflix releases a movie that shows catfishing as a bonding exercise for people of different social circles. Veronica goes from being Sierra's bully to being her best friend, but in the process just helps and encourages her to bully Jamey and screw with his feelings. It's a poor foundation for a friendship. As part of the catfishing, Veronica pretends to be Sierra on facetime and later goes on a date with Jamey as Sierra watches. Near the end of the movie, Jamey, who plays football for the opposing high school, comes to Sierra and Veronica's high school for a game and sees Veronica, so goes up to her and kisses her, leaving Sierra very angry and she calls off her friendship with Veronica. The catfishing is the catalyst for the other three main problematic things that happen in this movie. The first is the date. Sierra doesn't want Veronica and Jamey to kiss. at the end of the date, Jamey goes to kiss Veronica so she tells him to close his eyes and brings out Sierra and she kisses him instead. She then quickly hides before he opens his eyes again. This is a form of sexual assault. Jamey consented to kissing Veronica, not Sierra who he doesn't know exists. It may be minor, but it's assault. And Sierra walks away from it feeling great and Jamey is left none the wiser. Netflix portrays it as dreamy and magical, but it's wrong. One big thing in the movie is that Jamey says he could pick Sierra's voice "out of a line up" as they talk on the phone so often. So when she first comes face to face with him, she doesn't want to speak because it will blow her cover. So she pretends to be deaf, however Jamey is with his little brother who is also deaf so they start speaking ASL to each other, with Sierra doesn't know. This scene is uncomfortable to watch because it uses its only minority character, a deaf boy, as a punchline for a poorly set up and distasteful joke. And this boy is never seen again. The last thing is when Sierra sees Jamey kiss Veronica (as he would because he thinks he's dating her) and decides her friendship with Veronica is over. But she doesn't just stop talking to her as most people would - instead she hacks into her Instagram account and posts a screenshot of Veronica's boyfriend dumping her by text paired with a photo of them both in which Veronica is half naked. This photo quickly spreads round the school and is then broadcast on the jumbo screen at the football game. And her only justification for this when Dan asks her if it was her is "I thought you didn't like Veronica" which is unacceptable and wrong. It's a disgusting situation. Sierra then ends up going home from this game crying. Veronica won't talk to her, Jamey is avoiding her and Dan is feeling abandoned and is done with her. When her parents ask her what's wrong she says it's because she's fat and ugly and that it's her mum's fault because her mum was the blonde, skinny, popular prom queen in high school, because that makes sense obviously. The part of this that frustrates me the most is the lack of backlash Sierra gets from this. A project she has at school whilst this is going on is to write a poem and read it to the class. Instead of doing this she writes a song instead and hands it in late, and still gets an amazing grade (no consequences still!). This isn't what frustrates me though, it's what she does with this song. She decides to send it to Veronica who for some reason forgives her and plays it for Jamey who then decides to take her to homecoming. She then gives Dan a half-assed apology which he also accepts. The song isn't even an apology! The basic gist of the song is that she doesn't feel pretty like a rose, she feels like a sunflower, which aren't considered to be the prettiest flowers by most. And that apparently serves as a good enough apology for her to get all her friends back and get a boyfriend and the situation is forgotten. It's bullshit. The worst thing about this movie is probably that even if you changed it so that she was left with no one at the end of the movie and reaped the consequences and learned from her mistakes, it would still be a bad, slow moving, pretty boring movie to watch. Netflix made a bad choice with this one.
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