For folks who have been burned by a legion of YA books that failed to capture the literary lightning that the novels achieved, Everything Everything is a cure for those film failures.
Nicola Yoon’s tale of a girl who is imprisoned in her own house by her immune system which makes the outside world a death sentence, has charmed audiences the world over. Everything Everything leaps to the big screen and captures the heart beating beauty of Yoon’s rich emotional landscape and firmly lets us know what it is like to be a teenage girl discovering love for the first time. Its joy is also that one need not be a teenage girl, a fan of the book or anyone in the target audience of a YA novel to cherish what it is that the film accomplishes. One only has to be human, and possess the emotional maturity to understand the complexities of love, life and the frailty of our entire existence.
Amandla Stenberg is Maddy Whittier and the actress, who we first met as Rue in The Hunger Games, finally has a break out role in director Stella Meghie’s charming, heartfelt and surprisingly funny cinematic love letter to living every moment to its fullest. The camera loves her and she elevates this character beyond stereotypical teen in turmoil to a full fledged soul that we feel we know, inside and out. We see this world through her eyes and it is an astoundingly delightful journey that we would welcome to continue long after the credits roll.
The object of her affection, and ours for that matter, is Olly Bright (Nick Robinson). His last name is prophetic because he becomes a beacon of light for Maddy and one can see why she would risk so much (including her life), to pursue simply spending time with the charming young man. As she says in the film, being with him makes her feel like “she’s outside.” For a young woman who is trapped in a sanitized world that is always surrounded by four walls, that is the ultimate commentary on our leading man’s life force.
There is much — beyond Maddy’s illness — that is a challenge for our budding lovebirds. Through the script by J. Mills Goodloe, and their performances, the complexities of love come to life. Having feelings for someone is a good start, but the foundation of any deep relationship is much more complicated than that. Family, friends, society, inner demons and doubts and so much more muddle the heart’s longing for love in a way that Goodloe paints perfectly with her prose. Everything Everything could be a simple story, but it has a wealth of complexity beyond two crazy kids falling for each other.
Besides desiring these two to make it through the landmine-filled landscape that is their romance, the audience can find deeper meaning in the story that is exponentially more mature than your usual YA tale. Goodloe, Stenberg, Robinson and Meghie have collaborated to bring us a surprise summer joy from the most unlikely of sources. After an avalanche of product geared towards the YA audience, that has it teetering on saturation, it is a breath of fresh air to find Everything Everything breathing life back in to a genre that was thought to be on its cinematic final clutches of life.
Grade: B+