Nick Belmonte

This movie was good. But it wasn’t this amazing tear jerker I was promised by reviews. The good is simple, the psychology and basis of self identity are interesting concepts and absolutely get shaken up at the age Rielly is at in the movie. The plot is simple and straight forward, and somewhat relatable, but after that it lost me. For the bad I’ll start with anxiety. The best and most realistic scene of anxiety was the panic attack. It was a decent simplification of a panic attack and did well to show the symptoms. But anxiety played more as an adhd representation in much of the movie and sometimes as an evil mastermind and that’s just not the way I would’ve chose to showcase anxiety. To me anxiety is a constant state of worry but not of the future and it’s possibilities, but of everything. Anxiety about missing my alarm tomorrow sure, but also thoughts like did I do my homework, do I lock the door, did I plug my phone in, etc. I would’ve liked to see anxiety be a “glitch” in fear where fear of a bear when walking through a forest is considered logical and safe, but while getting ready for school is misplaced. I guess that’s also the state of issue with the film as a whole, there’s no depth. It’s all so superficial and it’s because we took the 5 main emotions and added 4 more rather than fleshing the original 5 out to have a deeper layer. And the line about how “joy just goes away as we get older” I just don’t comprehend. We find our joy in other things, it doesn’t go away. Overall, I have issues with the movie but by no means is it a horrible movie. It’s perfectly average in my opinion.