Director: Justin Baldoni
Cast: Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Parminder Nagra, Claire Forlani
Screenplay: Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis
116 mins. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, language and suggestive material.
Following in the footsteps of films like A Walk to Remember and The Fault in Our Stars, Five Feet Apart is a teen romance film dealing with a whole lot more than romance. It’s basis in Cystic Fibrosis gives it a shot of something I haven’t seen in a romance film, and unfortunately, that was the only thing unique about it.
Stella (Haley Lu Richardson, The Edge of Seventeen, Operation Finale) has CF, but she has a system. She knows what meds to take and when, when she needs to wear her afflovest, and exactly what she must do to remain on the list for new lungs. So when she meets Will (Cole Sprouse, The Suite Life Movie, TV’s Riverdale), another CF patient with no solid drug regimen, no plans to get better, and no hope, it drives her crazy. She insists that he let her help organize his drug cart in an effort to help him stay healthy, and in doing so, the two begin a bond that becomes something more powerful, but they cannot move forward together without breaking an important guideline for CF patients: that they cannot be closer than six feet to avoid cross-contaminating each other.
I found the Cystic Fibrosis layer of Stella to be incredibly interesting and powerful. I’ll be someone who admits to not know much about the ailment, so I was interested and captivated by her strength in fighting for each day. It’s nice that the filmmakers worked alongside the Claire’s Place Foundation to get all the details right about CF. I also found it interesting how she evolved as a character by her relationship with Will. Until the end. There’s some events and scenes surrounding her arc in the latter half of the film that I didn’t believe. There’s a lot about the third act that completely falls apart, in fact.
I think that Richardson and Sprouse had nice enough chemistry but nothing that really stuck. Their romantic relationship was one of the more boring elements of the film. It hits all the familiar beats of any romantic entanglements. At the end of the film, some bad decisions are made in the name of love, and I didn’t find myself seeing the point in the bad decisions. Where the relationship ends up at the end of the film is also something that seemed like exactly where I expected it to go. All in all, I was completely uninterested in the central crux of the story.
Five Feet Apart is rather forgettable as a love story but the CF stuff is interesting and insightful. Everything outside the romance is engaging at least. It’s just a problem that the film is a love story. Save your money on this one; there are better films at your cinema.
2/5
-Kyle A. Goethe
GOAT Film Reviews 