Keep It Reel: 'Everything, Everything'
By Marc Woodfork
'Everything, Everything' wants to be the film that reminds everyone what it was like to fall in love for the first time. How sweet. Unfortunately, this is not that film. I feel horrible for anyone who had a similar experience of falling in love. If you did, you missed out. This film carries like a really bad after-school special on the Hallmark Channel. It wants to be good, it wants to pull at your heart strings but it never comes close to reaching those depths.
The film tell the story of a teenage girl that can't leave the confines of her home due to an illness that compromises her immune system. Going outside or having someone from the outside come in, could kill her. A new boy arrives to the neighborhood and takes an interest in her. Like teenagers tend to do, the girl, played by Amandla Stenberg, defies her mother and decides to risk her life to be with the new boy.
The two embark on a "you only live once" romantic journey that winds up being a ridiculous, embarrassing, waste of time for viewers. The one bright spot of the film is the performance of Amandla Stenberg. With a better story and better script, she is a star in the making. This is one movie that should have never made it to the big screen. Two O'clock on a sunday afternoon on the Hallmark Channel squeezed between sporting events is where it belongs.