By Emily-Rose Toohey
The teen romantic comedy ‘Crush’ is a light-hearted, enjoyable take on the genre and it dropped for streaming on Disney+ over the weekend.
The story follows an aspiring artist Paige (played by ex Disney Channel star Rowan Blanchard) as she harbours a crush on popular girl Gabby (played by Isabella Ferreira) while developing a relationship with track star AJ (played by Moana voice actress Auli’i Cravalho).
As a whole, the film is simple and endearing and is very easy to watch – the run time coming in at one hour and 30 minutes is an absolute win.
However, its biggest let down is the script.
While Crush is definitely heart-warming, none of the jokes land or are particularly funny and the astonishingly predicable plot leaves much to be desired.
On the flip side, it’s great to see positive LGBT representation on screen without the characters inherently suffering.
This can colloquially be known as the ‘Schitt’s Creek approach’, in which LGBT character’s sexuality are never questioned but accepted and they skip over the ‘coming out’ story, which has been criticised as over done.
Despite this positive representation, it’s impossible to ignore the film’s flaws.
The acting from lead Rowan Blanchard was quite stale, and her mother (played by Megan Mullally) was over-the-top and cringeworthy.
As a whole, Crush was basically a glorified, more explicit version of a Disney Channel original movie – but who doesn’t enjoy those?
If you’re looking for positive LGBT representation, a light, easy to watch and predominantly fun and harmless movie, then look no further than Crush.
Despite it being a subpar film, there’s no harm in having a bit of movie-watching fun.
There’s been an influx of high school-based romcoms made for teenagers, like the widely successful Netflix movies The Kissing Booth (2018) and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018), but my question is: where are the romcoms made for an older demographic?
Nonetheless, Crush is available to watch on Disney+.
