Fix: What If Justin Bieber Wasn’t A Monkey Abandoning, Bucket-Peeing Monster?
Platforms: Amazon Prime
Official Summary:
To escape the stress of fame, teen pop star Jordan goes incognito in a small town, where he forms a special bond with a high school student named Emily.
FYA Summary:
Oh, to be a cosseted 17-year-old pop pet, drowning in too much money and constantly escaping from girls screaming your name. Sure, you have no privacy, but you’ll also never pay for mistakes like going to law school and thinking you’re going to change the world. Well, for Jordan Jaye, a massively famous pop singer, that’s life, and he’s tired of it.
Enter Emily, a perfectly middle-class high school gal who delivers pizzas (OMG, is she…poor? Her peers seem to think so) when she’s not working on her art. By chance, she helps Jordan escape some crazy fans in her tiny Southern California town, and they spend the next few days getting to know each other in a wholesome way. You know where this is going: Emily’s not impressed by Jordan’s fame, so naturally, she is the perfect girl for him.
Familiar Faces:
Sarah Jeffery as Emily
Maybe you’ve seen Sarah in The Descendants? I hadn’t–but she is a perfectly charming addition to the movie, making the best of some terrible lines.
Matthew Espinosa as Jordan
I don’t really watch YouTubers, but this kid has over 2 million subscribers, so you may have seen him. His acting is fine, and he actually looks like a teenager (because he is one!), but I did smile every time his “famous singer” voice cracked.
Couch-Sharing Capability: Low
Look, if you’ve been reading FYA for any length of time, you probably know our policy: no pleasure is a guilty pleasure. With that said, I found myself taking great pains to watch this in the dead of night, in the lowest volume possible. It’s not that it’s a bad movie–the dialogue strains credulity and the storyline is predictable, but I like cheesy movies. This one felt more like something only an actual tween/teen could love: as if I had opened some secret portal to remember what it’s like to be someone who thinks “I could change him!” or “if he just met me, it would be different.” (After age 20, those thoughts are surgically removed from your head. And now I’ve just written the next dystopian hit.) It felt embarrassing on a molecular level.
Recommended Level of Inebriation: High
You know what teens and tweens can’t do legally? Drink. I watched this stone-cold-sober, and it was fine, but I’d like to drink in order to remove the aforementioned “I would be the perfect girlfriend” thoughts from my shameful, vestigial teen brain.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: Find A Real Teen And Just Happen To Be In The Room
‘Nuff said.
