Mackenzie Yardley

One of the worst films I have seen. I was excited to see this cause I love sports movies but it was just bad. The timeline was so messy. It would hop back and forth like crazy, 13 years earlier, 1 year later, 1 week before, day before the match, 8 years ago. If you need to hop around that much then you should just tell the story in chronological order. Jumping to all these different times out of order across 14 years is just annoying and doesn't add or do anything to the story that telling it in order wouldn't do. Due to a lack of an actually compelling storyline, they tried to get creative with camera choices. We would have first person pov for some characters, lost of slo-mo tennis, at one point you are the ball. This does not save the story in any way and for me personally, made it more of a headache, though I understand some people probably liked the different pov. The worst was the five minute slo-mo of a character bouncing a ball and sweating, a sequence that could have happened in five seconds. which brings me to my third point. The movie was too long. If they had taken the time to really round out the characters and add some depth to them, then it could have been fine. But the baseline of a human being and personality were put forth, (not the actors fault btw, acting was well done) then the movie should have been a lot shorter, by at least 30 minutes. Now let's talk about sports movies. A well done sports movie has the sport as a secondary story that drives the main storyline. You can have an inspirational story- Forever Strong, Miracle, Coach Carter, Blind Side- and the main story is the main character overcoming a personal challenge or shortcoming, led through or inspired by the coach and/or the sport that they play. You can also do a comedic story- She's the Man, Happy Gilmore- where the characters have a unique circumstance to play the sport that garners a lot of laughs. This movie was about a Tashi's ego-hurt manipulative home-wrecking experience of two best friends. Every character was self-serving and an a-hole. I think with Tashi's injury, they should have played more along the inspirational recovery sports kind of story without adding sex and threeways as a cheap way to get attention. You aren't supporting or rooting for anyone. There is no fire or drive behind this movie to make it actually good. The tennis sequences were too drawn out. If you like tennis, I recommend just watching a match cause there was nothing good about this film.

Most of the negative comments are about how it was a musical although considering it had actors from the broadway musical in the film, and a musical note in the "A" I just think theyre morons. It was a good musical to movie adaptation. Janis and Damian were phenomanal in acting and singing. Renee Rapp is a fantastic Regina (as to be expected as she played her on Broadway). if you are looking for a shot for shot remake just watch the original. If it was going to be a shot for shot remake, then why remake it? My only reason for withholding a fifth star is that some of the camera choices weren't my favorite, nothing major just personal preference. The biggest draw back is actually Caddy Heron. She has good acting and a sweet singing voice, but since it is supposed to be adopted from the broadway musical, her voice was not right for Caddy. She is supposed to have these bigger songs and they changed it all because she couldnt do it. Gretchen also has a sweeter voice but her song calls for a sweeter voice so it makes sense. They changed "It Roars" to an entirely different song, "Stupid with Love" wasn't comedic nor powerful and Caddy doesnt even sing in "Apex Predator." That was the most disappointing thing for me. Of course I anticipated some changes (and there were) but hiring the literal star of the show who cannot pull off the star of the show's songs was a bad choice in my opinion. Other than that, the movie was great!