Now Streaming on Netflix
Directed by Fernando Lebrija
Starring Nesta Cooper, Keith Powers, and Alicia Sanz
The characters in #REALITYHIGH are the #boogeymen that #babyboomers are afraid of and #hate. They all clearly fall into the #millennial category, but seeing this reminds me that I don’t know any actual millennials. No one is like these people. If they’re millennials, no one else is. None of the characters are remotely likable, familiar, or interesting. Any way you look at them, these people are alien. Cam (the jock who is soft beneath his rugged exterior), Freddie (the miserable vehicle for the miserable “friend zone” plot), Dani (protagonist and our kind, animal-loving fish out of water) and the cavalcade of forgettable extras could all be shades of green with antennae and it would make more sense.
At the actual center of this debacle is Alexa Medina. The YouTube/Instagram/twitter/snapchat/whogivesashit star “who gets free stuff if we post while she shops.” She starts off unlikeable, repeating the phrase “let’s take a selfie, guys” within 5 minutes and making jokes about cerebral palsy. By the end of the movie, she’s still a human nightmare. Her conflict with Dani plays out how you’d imagine – mean girl Alexa plays nice with humble Dani just long enough to try to embarrass her to win the guy at the center of their love triangle. It doesn’t work and Dani ends up being a new internet celebutante.
No one learns anything. The Cougar faithful are better off without these miscreants. I spent the STAGGERING 1 hour and 40 minutes trying to figure out what this is about. A cautionary tale about befriending the local YouTube star after stealing his/her significant other? A criticism of social media (which is half-hearted at best after the school rejects the evil plot of Alexa)? Or just a coming of (internet) age? It fails at telling a successful story about any of these. Avoid this most terrifying movie of the year.