Movie Review: “Almost Adults” Is Almost Your Favorite Movie
This is part one of a series in which I will review all of the lesbian movies on Netflix. Even though most if not all of them have been heavily reviewed already, there are many that I haven’t watched. Join me as we go on this journey together. It’ll be super gay at best, unintentionally homophobic at worst, and cringeworthy almost always.
Week 1: Almost Adults, 2016. Dir. Sarah Rotella.
Netflix Synopsis: Two best friends start to grow apart as they reach maturity and must come to terms with changes in their relationship and their individual sexuality.
Directed by Sarah Rotella and written by Adrianna DiLonardo, both of the YouTube channel UnsolicitedProject, Almost Adults is very much what its synopsis belies. It is a movie about female friendship. It is a movie about an individual’s sexuality. And, as a fan of Carmilla, the lesbian vampire web-series starring Adults’ Natasha Negovanlis and Elise Bauman, I was very excited to watch it. However, if you‘ve never seen Carmilla and don’t watch anything from UnsolicitedProject, you likely won’t feel as invested in these characters as the film wishes you would.
Almost Adults follows the lives of friends and roommates Cassie (Negovanlis) and Mackenzie/”Mack” (Bauman) somewhere in their last year of college. The movie opens with a shot of the two in bed together, Cassie having come in sometime during the night “for the cuddles.” While still in bed, they bicker about breakfast — Cassie will make them blueberry pancakes, but only on the promise that Mack “won’t ever leave” her, because now her boyfriend Matthew is gone and she’s all alone. We never see the pancakes of note, but we are treated to a montage of the two young women sipping soda out of the same bottle, pulling rogue eyelashes off of each other, and play tackling while a very sweet song with the lyrics, “I’m already one of the few who gets you,” and, “Maybe we’re the only ones” plays. It’s all very queer.
Except for that it’s not. Only Mack is gay, as we discover quickly thereafter in a dinner conversation with her parents. Meanwhile, Cassie is at a different restaurant ensuring her parents that she is not a lesbian, so no, that is not why she broke up with Matthew.
One set of parents is happy. The other is devastated. It is not the one you think.
Mack’s parents are supportive and unsurprised to hear that their daughter likes women. Strangely, she is upset about this. They don’t have the “right” reaction — the one that involves tears and disownment — and therefore they’ve ruined the experience for her. She only gets to come out to her parents once, and no drama ensues because of it? “How fucked up is that?”
But have no fear. Mack gets the reaction she’s always wanted when Cassie finds out from a coworker instead of Mack herself. Cassie is furious, even after Mack points out that the reason her friend was the last to know is because her opinion mattered most. The rest of the movie is about Cassie letting go of her anger, and despite this being the core of the film, it’s the least interesting part of it.
However, as annoying and self-involved as Cassie’s response is, it is important to note that the conflict of the film is not Mack’s coming out itself. Instead, the conflict resides in the emotional and interpersonal ramifications that the characters face after the fact. And though it is irritating that this conflict rests so much on Cassie making it all about herself, there is no demonization or catastrophizing of homosexuality. Mack experiences rough waters within her friendship, but nothing else. There are a lot of LGBT films that cannot say the same, so kudos to DiLonardo for that.
Almost Adults was written and directed by gay women, so clearly there is authenticity and real life experience behind its story. This lends it legitimacy, but also raises expectations. Despite the queer creators, something about the depiction of Mack’s experience falls flat. Rotella and DiLonardo can’t decide on a tone for the film, which leaves you unsure of how to react to it. Perhaps this confusion is due to the frequent fallback on stereotypes — gay friend Levi is full of quips about gayness and admonishes Mack for not being able to tell the difference between two seemingly identical shirts (so funny, right?). Maybe it’s that the dialogue feels a little too contrived — “Newsflash! They don’t care about you like I do!” Regardless, clichés are abundant in this film, and none of them land strongly enough to come across as satire. It’s likely that most of it is meant to be an inside joke to all of the lesbians — myself included — who have done the same things as Mack, but because the film doesn’t know what it wants to be, the stereotypes feel more lazy than self aware.
Almost Adults is almost the movie you want. It’s heartening to have women as both #1 and #2 on the call sheet, and it’s refreshing to have a film about platonic female friendship — especially when one of the women is queer. The importance of having a story about a queer woman coming from the minds and mouths of queer women is profound. It is for these reasons that I would recommend Almost Adults. It’s a fine movie and you will enjoy it enough, but it is both Rotella and DiLonardo’s first feature film, and it feels like it. The script could benefit from some re-working, and the story is more or less predictable — I became more interested in watching the general depiction of gay women in everyday life than in the characters themselves. But, it is shot nicely and has a happy ending. So, if you’re in the mood for a movie that’s both pretty and pretty gay, go for it.
Plus, even if you hate it, you’ll at least have gotten to watch Elise Bauman make out with some girls. And what’s not to love about that?
FINAL TALLY
Gays Buried: None!
Queer Director: Yes
Queer Writer: Yes
Queer Actor(s): Yes
Watch Almost Adults
Next week’s movie: Below Her Mouth
