But first, an explanation as to why this film exists at all.........
Big studios salivated at the success of the film version of John Green's "The Fault In Our Stars"......and why not? YA doomed-lovers romances don't require 200 million dollar budgets and CGI monsters......they don't have to cost much they already have a primed pre-sold audience who read the book and can't wait to sit in the dark and cry into their popcorn.......a sure bet.....what could go possibly wrong?
That's the game plan, anyway.......but like all Hollywood studio game plans, it's littered with movies ignored by their target audience......destined to open, close and head for the Wal-Mart bargain bin in less than a year......
"Everything Everything" maintains its sweet, innocuous storyline through two thirds of its running time......adorable 17 year old Maddy (Amandla Sternbert) falls in love with Boy Next Door Olly (Nick Robinson).....
Woe is them. Maddy, afflicted with a faulty immune system that renders the outside world and all its germs lethal to her, has lived her entire life in her movie-spacious, antiseptically sealed home, watched over by her physician mother (Anika Noni Rose). Mom isn't merely a helicopter mom......she's closer to a perpetually low-flying drone Mom......
Maddy and Olly start off their romance safely with texts and window notes, but it isn't long before Maddy's sympathetic nurse (Ana de la Reguera) sneaks Olly for some chaste meet 'n greets......which quickly escalate to....oh dear God, the germs, the germs.....full scale kissing......
The young lovers escape to the fresh air of Hawaii........which sets off the story's Act III Big Twist......a plot development so outrageous and poisonous, that this flimsy little movie couldn't ever recover from it......and it's painfully clear that the book's author Nicola Yoon and the filmmakers didn't think out the ramifications too much, preferring to skate over it and get back to main business of reuniting the two young cuties.......
If you stop and ponder this twist for a moment (which we can assure you, nobody involved with the film ever did) what you have here are the makings of a monumentally sick horror film or at the very least, a dark psychological drama.........but that would require a level of thought and introspection way, way beyond the folks who put this movie together........
The studio and the filmmakers evidently hoped the expected teen audience would switch off their brains for the third act bombshell and just continue to roll with the romance........sorry, no can do......at our age, the BQ thinks about everything.......which is why "Everything Everything" has no immunity from a 1 star rating (*)......
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