As I have proved before, trashy romantic comedies are not below me. What I mean by that, put a gay person in a shitty romantic comedy and I definitely would still watch it, and just because I liked it, doesn’t mean that it’s good. Having said that, maybe you’re starting to figure out how I feel about this movie. I can’t wholeheartedly say this is a good movie, an Oscar isn’t in the horizon. But I always want to see queer girls on my screen, so Crush already got a few bonus points.
Let’s break this down — Paige is high school student trying to get into art school, as well as grooming her length crush on Gabriella, the most popular girl in school. There is a graffiti artist active in the school, King Pun, and the administration is out to get them, and by word of mouth decide that the mystery artist is Paige. In order to save herself from suspension, Paige must figure out who is the real King Pun. At the same time, she decides to join the Track team in order to win over her crush. During her time in the team, she gets more acquainted with Gabriella’s twin sister AJ, and everything gets messy.
I tried holding myself back from rolling my eyes while writing this description, because the premise is absolutely ridiculous, but I still urge you to give this movie a chance. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again — queer people deserve trashy movies too! Whether it’s cringey horror or cliché romance, we deserve to have those too. Yeah, I hate love triangles too, and their ultra-accepting school is unrealistic, but who cares? I want to see teen girls being in love and happy with each other. Lesbians often get tragic endings and depressing plots; I just want them to get a normal teen movie ending for once. What this movie does so well is being light and sweet, no dramatic coming-out, no homophobia, no popular kids bullying the nerds, no mean kids at all, just fun and slightly cringey — and that’s great!
When it comes to cast, I don’t have a lot to say. There’s some diversity, a lot of familiar faces, but no one really stood out in terms of acting, sorry. Again, aside from great queer rep and overall bringing to the table something we needed (sweet WLW romantic comedy), I don’t have a lot to credit this movie with. Still, as is it’s a win for the gays, and I encourage you to watch it just to fill that void of never seeing queer women being in happy situations and in love.
On the flip side, I can’t help but compare Crush with Heartstopper. Both come to give us those positive stories, both set in high school, both just came out. I think I’m not biased when I say that Heartstopper is better in almost every way, because it’s a series they had more time to build the romance, it’s British which is immediately better, and the diversity is as good if not more than Crush. Still, of the top of my head I can think of several movies and series about (semi) happy gay boys (Skam, Young Royals, 3 Months and more). When I think about series about queer girls, it’s not that easy. When I heard about this movie, I was thrilled, I thought we will get the WLW version of Heartstopper or Skam. While that didn’t happen, it still made my heart happy for seeing these queer girls living their best lives, and that will always make me emotional.
In summary, 4/5, not a masterpiece, still cute and very very gay.
