Movie Review: Five Feet Apart

Five Feet Apart (2019) 

Directed by Justin Baldoni

Written by Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis

Starring Cole Sprouse, Haley Lu Richardson, Moises Arias 

Release Date March 15th, 2019 

Published March 15th 2019

Five Feet Apart stars the utterly brilliant Haley Lu Richardson in a story that is beneath her talent. Richardson stars as Stella Grant, a teenager coping with Cystic Fibrosis or CF. As we meet Stella, she is returning to the hospital with a new recurrence in her lifelong battle with CF. Stella is exceptionally familiar with this hospital, to the point that it appears as if they hold this room for her with her stuff already laid out. That could just be bad editing, but that’s how it plays. 

Also back in the hospital is Poe (Moises Arias), a fellow CF patient. The two of them have been going through CF treatments together for their whole lives and I did like some of their chemistry, even if Poe’s homosexuality is awkwardly jammed into the story via some truly terrible dialogue. The movie needs us to not worry about Poe being heartbroken when we are introduced to Stella’s actual love interest, the dreamy, Will Newman (Cole Sprouse). 

Will is a newcomer at this hospital having recently moved nearby with his single mother to take advantage of a drug trial that is Will’s last hope. While Stella can hope for new lungs that can buy her a few years of life, Will has a version of CF, called B-Cepacia, that is thus far incurable and means that he is not a candidate for new lungs. This has, quite reasonably, made Will an uncooperative patient who is simply waiting to die until he meets Stella. 

Yes, this is one of THOSE movies, where pretty teens die amid their quirky attempts at creating romance in the face of death. What makes 5 Feet Apart borderline irresponsible is the central gimmick which the film rather carelessly flogs for forced drama. You see, CF patients are kept at a strict, 6 feet apart distance. CF patients are so vulnerable to each others strains of virus that incidental contact could inflame brand new infections. 

This is especially dangerous because, as I mentioned, Will’s particular strain is even more deadly than those of Poe and Stella. Does this stop him from attempting to make contact and be around Stella? Of course not. Now, to be fair, the film does well to establish why Stella takes a particular interest in Will, beyond him being dreamy. The same sense that drives her to want to spend time in the NICU fawning over babies through a glass partition, draws her to the equally helpless hunk. 

There is also a well established trope of teenagers with no control over their lives via disease or abuse or something in that vein who take chances at whatever might make their life a little normal. It’s normal for pretty teenagers to want to be desired by other pretty teenagers. It’s normal for them to want things that they cannot really have and take a few risks in order to steal what little of the thing they can of what they can’t have. I am on board with that aspect, but it’s handled rather clumsily here. 

Five Feet Apart was directed by Justin Baldoni who counts on his resume a documentary in which he closely followed the life of a teenager with CF, among a group of patients with terminal disease. You can sense that he cares about getting the disease right, to a point. Baldoni appears to respect what goes into trying to survive CF for as long as one can. Sadly, the conventions of the modern medical drama crossed with the star-crossed teen romance doesn’t allow for the kind of care and nuance that Baldoni might want to bring to it. 

What we get instead is a series of cliched romantic bits that double as unintentional thriller setpieces as we watch in horror as the failed blocking of the characters fails to keep them at the safe distance that the disease plot requires. Sure, they keep saying that they are five feet apart but often it doesn’t look that way. Take the bit they do with a pool cue. Stella claims that the pool cue is five feet long and they use it in a way that allows them to mimic holding hands. However, in more than one scene they are clearly holding the cue wrong and drawing each other too close. 

This becomes a moot concern when they both leap into that swimming pool that all hospitals have. Why not just have them spit in each other's mouths for pete’s sake. Just because the pool is chlorinated doesn’t mean it’s safe. Then they start splashing each other with water. Are you kidding me? Perhaps my germaphobe tendencies are coming to the fore but this seems more than a little irresponsible. Never mind that these are two people who already struggle to breath now just jumping into a swimming pool and exerting themselves in a manner that would deeply stress their lungs. 

I’m probably just being overly picky, but details matter and Five Feet Apart gets far too many details wrong. That, combined with the fact of the film’s treacly and contrived set pieces, such as a late in the game escape from the hospital that coincides with an important turn of the plot, turns this serviceable teen weepie into something rather insufferable by the end. Five Feet Apart pushes the wrong buttons far too often for my taste, even as star Haley Lu Richardson does so many things right. 

Richardson is an exceptional young actress and proves herself to be far more interesting and intelligent than the movie she is stranded within. If you want to see Richardson at her best seek out 2017’s Columbus with her and John Cho. That film is exceptional in every way. I even wrote a loving tribute to the film’s remarkable use of the language of film that you can read if you click here. There is also her remarkably charming and hilarious performance in last year’s criminal under seen, Support the Girls, for even more great Haley Lu Richardson. My review of that movie is linked he

Movie Review Nacho Libre

Nacho Libre (2006) 

Directed by Jared Hess

Written by Jared Hess, Mike White, Jerusha Hess

Starring Jack Black, Peter Stormare, Moises Arias 

Release Date June 16th, 2006 

Published June 15th, 2006 

Jared Hess broke big with his debut feature Napoleon Dynamite. The cult that has grown from Napoleon has raised the stakes on Hess's young career. Expectations for his future success are huge and his follow-up, new to DVD, Nacho Libre is just the kind of oddly humorous, entirely offbeat, flick we might have expected.

Teaming Hess with another rising cult star Jack Black and his pal;writer Mike White is the kind of wonderfully inspired comic combination that Napoleon fans could have dreamed. Nacho Libre is a rare sort of movie made for a cult audience by cult figures. Whether the film can reach beyond the cult is a big question.

In Nacho Libre Jack Black stars as Ignacio, an orphan who grew up in a monastery and became a monk. He's in charge of the food which is just a notch below the kind of gruel described in a Dickens novel. Serving food has never been first and foremost on Ignacio's mind. Even as a child he was drawn to the dramatic spectacle of the Mexican wrestling ring and the masked heroes known as Luchadores.

One night the orphanage's food is stolen; Ignacio decides the only way to get the money to feed the children is to wear stretchy pants and become a luchadore. To do this he seeks out the very thief who stole the food, a skinny naif named Esqueleto (Hector Jimenez). With his speed and surprising strength, Esqueleto is the perfect partner for the newly dubbed Nacho.

Of course becoming a luchador is not easy. In fact Nacho and Esqueleto make a regular habit of getting their butts kicked by every possible combination of luchadore, fat, skinny even lilliputian luchadores. On the bright side they are paid even when they lose. The question becomes will the fame of the wrestling world go to Nacho's head or can he remain a humble monk and win the heart of a beautiful nun, Sister Encarnacion (Ana DeLa Reguera). Or can he possibly do both.

The plot description sounds far more straightforward than it actually is. In fact most of the comedy does not come from the oddball wrestling scenes but rather from Jack Black's unique persona. To get the humor of Nacho Libre you must be a fan of Jack Black and familiar with the kind of madcap insanity that entertains him.

Indeed it seems that much of the premise of Nacho Libre and the idea of Jack Black playing an outsized mexican wrestling champion extends from an idea that maybe only Jack Black and writer Mike White thought was funny. Then came director Jared Hess who took the unusual premise and filtered it through his deadpan comic perspective and the idea became even less accessible.

Esoteric doesn't begin to describe the humor of Nacho Libre. Sure there are plenty of the pratfalls and physical humor that Jack Black specializes in, but much of the film is an earnest examination of a man and a dream to become a luchadore. The humor then comes from Jack Black playing a character whose dream is to become a luchadore and if you don't think that is funny then Nacho Libre is not the movie for you.

To enjoy Nacho Libre you have to enjoy Jack Black and his manic energy, odd gesticulation and in this film, a funny accent. The story of Nacho Libre is earnest and oddly straightforward, the humor comes from Jack Black being a Mexican wrestler. I found it funny, but I can understand where some people might not.

For me, as a fan of Jack Black's strange sense of humor, his odd tics and verbal dynamics, Nacho Libre is a terrifically funny film. If however you are uninitiated to the cult of Jack black then Nacho Libre may be a trying experience, a series of earnest, deadpan examinations of the very odd life of an odd man who wears stretchy pants and dreams of leaping off the top rope. You have to smile at that last description to be part of the audience of Nacho Libre.