Spontaneous - Movie Review

The Movie: Spontaneous

The Director: Brian Duffield

The Cast: Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer, Hayley Law, Piper Perabo, Rob Huebel, Yvonne Orji.

The Story: Get ready for the outrageous coming-of-age love story about growing up...and blowing up. When students in their school begin exploding (literally), seniors Mara and Dylan struggle to survive in a world where each moment may be their last.

The Review:
This is a tale of two movies. Well, the same movie, but two very different halves. The first half of the movie is funny, charming, and brilliantly entertaining. The second half of the movie (it might actually be more the final third) is none of those things and it's like a totally different movie. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed how much fun most of the story is, the rest is just blah and drawn out to the point where I was really losing interest.

There are a couple major twists that lead to the shift in tone and energy so I can't really go into a lot of the specifics of what I didn't like. That being said, let's talk about what I did like. Katherine Langford and Charlie Plummer are perfectly cast in this movie both as individual characters and as a teenagers falling in love duo. The chemistry is there and you believe in how and why they fall for each other even as unbelievable things are happening around them.

Langford has been making some moves lately having held her own amongst an all star cast in Knives Out and appearing in the TV shows 13 Reasons Why and Cursed. What she does in this movie shows she can take on stronger characters and lead roles with a personality and screen presence that is really fun and hard to resist. Plummer has also been making some moves lately as he has another starring role in Words on Bathroom Walls that is in theaters right now and both movies he more than holds his own in a lead role. I can see both of these actors doing big things in the future thanks to what they have done in this movie.

The concept and overall idea of this movie is pretty fantastic and I'm not sure if it qualifies as science fiction or fantasy or maybe both but exploding teenagers aside, this is mostly a really good teen romance comedy. The characters are funny and, as I mentioned, the two leads are extremely likable and even better together, and then the random spontaneous combustions add a shock value and unique edge to the film that could have made for a really great experience if not for the third act plummet into oblivion.

The Verdict:
Spontaneous is a super fun movie and was close to being one of my favorites of the year and then the third act happened. The message of the movie is live for the moment because you never know when you might explode, I just wish the movie itself had been able to finish strong instead crashing and burning before it could cross the finish line.


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