Sierra Burgess Is a Loser
Director: Ian Samuels
Year Released: 2018
Rating: 0.5
Insecure Sierra (Shannon Purser, a.k.a. Barb) gets "pranked" by the head cheerleader Veronica (Kristine Froseth) when she gives Sierra's phone number to the school quarterback Jamey (Noah Centineo) instead of her own - to keep up the ruse, Sierra and Veronica become unlikely pals, with Veronica pretending to be Sierra over Facetime in exchange for Sierra "tutoring" her in the classics. Teen romps are typically cranked out piles of garbage, and this is no different - Samuels, working off a screenplay by Lindsey Beer, recycles Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac and 80's romantic comedies unimaginatively (oh look, Lea Thompson and Alan Ruck are in there! and Ruck speaks in quotations!), taking every opportunity to mock its title character for her matronly physique and trying to seem both 'intelligent' (you don't need to be a Nietzsche scholar to wince when he's brought up) and 'modern' (20k followers on Instagram makes you an e-celebrity these days?), complete with an African-American Best Friend (RJ Cyler), who could have been called "Token." "Plato was a jerk," Sierra tells Veronica during a study session ... as if.
