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I don't know why, but Max is always the one streaming service I forget I have.
That's probably because for a while there, my wife kept cancelling and then resubscribing to it. And that's one of the reasons my Young Justice write-ups got ended after season 2... because I thought we lost Max for good several months back. Maybe I'll get back to those someday now!
Either way, when I initially saw that the new Kiernan Shipka-led comedy Sweethearts was out on streaming, I was disheartened to see it was on Max. But then my wife confirmed that, yes, we have that service again. So huzzah! Time to enjoy a throwback, vulgar, coming-of-age sex comedy!
Sweethearts is the story of two best friends, Jamie and Ben, away at college for their freshman year. Despite being away from home, they have maintained their relationships with their high school partners. Jamie is still dating Simon, who has been accepted to Harvard, and Ben is with Claire, who is still a year away from graduating high school.
Early in the film, Ben and Jamie come to the realization that their loyalty to their current partners is ruining their college experience. So they make a pact to return home from Thanksgiving break and dump their respective paramours.
Obstacles a'plenty rise up to provide challenges to do so, and whacky hijinx ensue as the pair have to face down not only their current lovers but also their own relationship and feelings for each other.
Oh! And now that I realize we have Max, I should totally watch The Penguin!
TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS
+ Any movie with a leading pair depends almost entirely on the chemistry and performances of that pair. And luckily, Sweethearts has Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga as its central cast.
Shipka and Hiraga do exceptional jobs as the movie's leads. They carry the movie with their humor and ability to play off of each other. Everything in their orbit really works.
I have been a fan of Shipka's for a while at this point, and she is well on her way to being one of Hollywood's most steady and dependable actresses. I'm less familiar with Hiraga, but he pulls his own weight opposite her. Every scene with the two of them was a joy to watch.
+ The raunchy teen sex comedy is much rarer these days than it used to be in the 80's, 90's, and 00's. And there's a good reason for that, as we mostly overdid that genre in those eras, and we seemingly got it out of our system. And there are occasionally those polls that show Gen Z and Gen Alphas want less sex and lust in their cinema going forward. I'm not sure I believe those polls as much more than clickbait, but we've all seen them.
But it can be nice to get a more mature and socially updated entry into the genre every now and then. Say what the younger generations will, someone likely has an appetite for these movies. And we can do them a little better nowadays than just having nudity and gay panic jokes!
Sweethearts isn't WILDLY raunchy or anything, but the language is vulgar, there is a quick shot of an exposed penis, and there are a few chaste-but-sexual situations. You also get a moment showing a girl riding a guy's face, I guess, so maybe I'm not giving it enough credit here.
Either way, the comedy is crude, but in a clever and intelligent way. It's fascinating to see a type of movie we thought was left behind get modernized for today's sensibilities.
- There are a lot of strange and unnecessary subplots to help pad the runtime to feature length proportions. Most notably, the movie keeps leaving Ben and Jamie's plot to focus on the misadventures of their third friend, Palmer, as he explores what life is--and can be like--for a gay man in suburban Ohio.
Make no mistake, Palmer's part of the story is funny and endearing, but it's also long and feels like it is pulling the audience away from our main story. It comes across like the screenwriters did not have enough material for Ben and Jamie, so they had to throw in a-whole-nother story arc to fill the bucket.
There are also much more minor, but still somewhat distracting, subplots about Jamie's childhood friend who turned on her and other matters. It all just ends up feeling like the film had a lot of time to waste.
- When the crux of the tale is that Ben and Jamie want to break up with their current partners, you would think that we would, you know, get some decent screentime with those aforementioned current partners. But Claire and Simon are barely in the flick, and when they are, they are reduced to little more than one dimensional caricatures. Claire is obsessive and extremely sexual; Simon is a dope jock. And that's all we get.
We never really learn to feel anything for these characters who are about to get dumped. They are just obstacles to our protagonists. As enjoyable as Palmer's side story is, I'd rather the film had spent a little time fleshing out these two so we can actually buy into the mystique of whether our heroes actually SHOULD dump their lovers. Maybe they aren't so bad once you get to know them, you know?
OVERALL
Sweethearts is a charming but unspectacular dirty teen rom-com that has some strong humor and vulgar moments, but it's probably unlikely to stick around in your memory for long after you've watched it. It's one of those Good Enough movies that makes an hour-and-a-half pass by pleasantly, but I worry that in a few months, I'll have forgotten everything that happened in it.
🍿 SCORE = 60 / 100
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