 You know that song yet, you know? Yeah. I don't remember. Hi. Welcome back to Spooningsville, and we're going to be covering the half of it. Yeah. Found on Netflix, came out in 2020, so during COVID I guess. It's not a COVID movie, but it came out during COVID. Overall, I liked it, but let's get into why I hesitated. It's a cool premise. I like the premise. So how did you feel about the movie? I liked it. I did like it. It was a cool idea, right? This love triangle thing in a traditional small town, but then the love triangle is between a girl who has a crush on the other girl and then the guy, and then the Esther, the one that is being sought after. It first isn't aware of either of them, really. She got this boyfriend, kind of adult, you know? But popular. But popular, and I guess sometimes people get thrown into that. And Esther gets basically thrown into that relationship. The guy who's with the guy because she's pretty. Kind of a Steve Holt type. And that's why they're dating. The Esther's boyfriend is moneyed. He comes from a wealthy family. And so people at school are like, oh, you know, she's so lucky that she's pretty. Because then she gets to date the guy. I remember in the bathroom, some of the girls talk about how, oh, you know, something like, I didn't really catch it, but it seemed to reference her being poor. And so she's lucky that she's dating this guy because, yeah. Dating up. She's dating up, basically, yeah. You know what I liked about this movie is that it kind of points out the flaw, I think, in a lot of those high school movies. It always confused me watching them, is you have the main character. They got to do some kind of thing to trick or to, they have to mask who they actually are. And then they win over the person that they have a crush on. And then a lot of times that's how it ends. But you're like, well, they're eventually going to find out that's not who you are. It always kind of seemed silly to me. So those kind of premises, I'd always reject it. Reject the premise of those kind of movies because you're like, okay, well. Why didn't you reject it this time? Well, because it's not actually, it's showing that that's not going to work. That you can pretend and then you can actually convince someone to go on a date with you. And then it's like, oh, what next? Now that you've tricked the person, now they're going to find out that you're not that kind of person. Yeah. It's not going to work. So I did like that. It was interesting. I like how it started off with the Greek myth of people used to be a whole and then it got split off. Maybe I can't remember. Probably Zeus did it. Zeus is always screwing with humans. You know, he's a pretty vengeful God. Yeah. He's pretty less serious. Yeah. But yeah, so I like how it started off with that. And then that's kind of their way of saying, you know, and then explains how people have this, you need to find your whole again, you know. Yeah. But then that could mean necessarily whether it's man or woman or woman and woman because the main character is lesbian. So she's attracted to Esther. You know, how's that going to work in kind of a conservative town and Esther again. So that I think that's where we felt that we couldn't quite buy. I generally felt that the characters were quite good, quite real. The father, the main character, Esther seemed a bit kind of fantasy a little bit because for someone that is willing to put up with just going along with being around these people that would bore her. Yeah, she seems to be so good at painting and so drawn to her, you know, creative side and then the main character who is a deeper person who feels deeply and thinks deeply just didn't seem kind of makes sense. Yeah. And that's the issue I really had with the movie because the whole, the two holes are Ellie and Esther. But Esther doesn't make sense whatsoever. Yeah. So I didn't feel that there was chemistry between Ellie and Esther. That you are still supposed to feel happier that at the end, Ellie kisses Esther and shows her feelings. But I'm kind of like, well, what's so great about Esther? Why do you even care? The movie touched on a lot of important things like homosexuality and small towns, religion as well as immigrant experiences. Like Ellie gets bullied because of her name. That's unique, right? Yeah. And she's ostracized because of that. But they didn't really come together. Yeah. Even the church, the religious aspect of the movie didn't really, we didn't really need it. Right. We honestly, because what was, they'd never really integrated it into the movie so much. Right. But there would be a little, I remember Paul says to, when he finds out that Ellie is a lesbian, he's like, what are you going to go to hell? Right. So you get little things like that. And I'm like, okay, I mean, come on. Yeah. This wasn't really enough. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, so what was the point of the church thing the whole time, them going to church? Yeah. I felt like Paul is someone who would be like, oh, oh, this is weird. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I had to be like, remember, these people feel this way about that stuff. And I was really irritated with the dad, as much as I was, of course, sympathetic to grief. At some point you can't let your daughter take on everything. Yeah. Exactly. That's just, you know, help her out because she also is grieving the loss of her mom. And so Paul, when the dad ends up speaking in Mandarin, it's because Paul says something like, you know, you don't really see your daughter. You don't actually see her. And so then he starts expressing himself in Mandarin, understanding where Paul was coming from, realizing the burden that he's placed on her, and then just expressing herself in the language that he's most comfortable with. The moment was nice because Paul allowed it to happen because he's a sweet guy, not the kind of guy who says things like you're going to hell if you're a lesbian. He's the kind of guy who will listen to someone who's clearly expressing pain in a language that he doesn't understand but is mature enough to recognize that that's happening. And that is a momentous event that he needs to play out and not say something like, well, I don't understand, Mr. Chu. What'd you say? That relationship, I think, the relationship between Ellie and the dad was very much, much better developed. Relationship between Ellie and her dad, relationship between Paul and Ellie, those relationships, there was much more chemistry there. That is why for me, I do not feel, I just feel like they should have had Ellie end up with Paul. I understand that. Or just develop it better with Esther. Or develop it better. Because I get that the whole point is that it's not just the breaking up into it and finding your whole. It can be a woman and a woman. That's the idea, right? Exactly. But then make it work more with Esther. So yeah, I think for me, I really was liking it the first two-thirds of the movie. The whole time. Yeah. We were happy, the whole movie. Yeah. It just kind of starts the last few scenes. It starts to kind of get a little more dramatic, a little more kind of over-the-top movie-like when everyone's objecting in the church and things like that. That kind of like lost me a little bit. And I feel like they had to do that. The theatrics were necessary because things were so wrapped up. If they had developed the relationship between Esther and Ellie or not even, I guess maybe the relationship between Esther and Ellie in the sense of maybe giving interaction between these two people more screen time as much screen time as they've given to Paul. And also if they had stretched out Esther's character more so that we could actually be endeared to her, I wasn't just endeared to her because she's a preacher's daughter and she's poor and she's forced to be in a relationship with this guy who's handsome and she's just so low because she has to do this because she's pretty. Give me some juice. Okay, so she likes some art. I don't really see her as someone who likes those kinds of things. I don't even really imagine that someone who is that deep as deep as Ellie too would actually find herself in a situation like that. She would just not be able to put up with that guy. The guy that she ends up dating. She didn't really feel like a person. Yeah, she didn't feel like a person whatsoever. The theatrics I think were there because they just quickly wrapped things up. Because even the relationship between Esther when Esther and Ellie discover... Well, Esther finally realizes, I guess, that she likes Ellie. It just happens so quickly. There isn't anything that makes me feel like the two halves found each other. There's nothing. That was another thing for me. The relationship in the movie. Because then at the end it's one of those where I'm not sure if you're trying to add a character flaw here or if the writing is muddled up. Because then at the end it's trying to be really sweet and saying goodbye to Paul she's going on a train, going off to school but instead of it being like a nice Harry Potter train ending where it just hits you right in the feels she's kind of being like not unable to be sweet. Oh, we'll see you're crying. She says it like three or four times. She's on the train. Where does this come from? I thought you were so deep and emotional and intellectual and all this stuff. I try to sometimes accept that sometimes people are too quick to be like that's not her character. That's bad writing because it doesn't feel like that person. And sometimes people can be very mature in some instances and then when it comes to other things they can have a total lack of being able to be vulnerable with this other person. It happens, but you just feel like it's the end of the movie it's starting to become a pretty theatrical movie so just let it have a bit of a dramatic ending, you know? And yeah, it's just kind of like okay well now I'm kind of annoyed at you and now the movie's ending is supposed to be happy for you but I'm like you're kind of being rude to Paul who's really been kind of like the pretty, you know? Completely. It didn't work. Didn't leave with that. It was going well. Yeah, it was great and then it just wasn't. Yeah, I'm seeing, I'm just looking at what else I wrote. Yeah, I did not see anything in Esther that merited the kind of I don't know, iteration. Not like a heat ledger from 10 things I hate about you. You know, that character's interesting, it's my other priorities. She just wasn't. She just wasn't interesting at all. Esther feels like a picture that was just plastered in scenes like the cardboard that someone was carrying around just throw that in there. It does, it does. That was very disappointing because I think I don't know. We don't know how much time. I wasn't endeared to that ending so that was a huge loss obviously especially because there isn't a lot of representation in movies with regard to homosexuality and so I feel like do it right if you're going to do it. Yeah, they should have focused on that more because at the end I'm thinking when she's like, okay, well I'll see you in a couple of years and I'm like, I don't even bother. You can do way better than Esther, she's boring. I think everyone should be a painter. Everyone should paint on their spare time. Everyone should have a creative outlet, absolutely. But she seemed like not someone who genuinely is about art for art's sake and Van Gogh and you just have to paint furiously because it's about just creating it's the raw process of creating. She didn't seem like that to me, just seemed like, oh I just want to add to my social capital that when I go to art school I can, you know, it's one more thing to add to my attractiveness level. That is what I was getting from Esther. Yeah, Ellie Chu, I liked her a lot. Yeah, I liked the actress. Yeah, I liked her a lot. I liked her, the actress and the character. I liked it but it could have been so much, it could have been so much better. It was so good. Yeah. Until the end. Yeah. Yeah, the way they wrapped it up was so bad. Yeah, the last three or four scenes just, yeah, okay. So I was really upset because I was loving it the whole time. Like a six or 6.5. A six. Yeah. A six. Yeah. Only because they had a good thing going until the end and it could have been a great movie. Yeah. So I guess if you're giving it a 6.5, what is that? 6.25? 6.25 out of 10 ripe tomatoes. Yeah, what did you guys think? Let us know. Let us know. Do we suck? And below, should we re-evaluate? Should we re-evaluate? Our lives? Yeah. Alright, bye. I think the light's okay.