Every Day

YA adaptations get a bad rap these days, and, honestly, I can’t fully refute it.  How many sappy, poorly-executed films have come from the world of YA literature?  I can remember garbage like Before I Fall, The Fifth Wave, the whole Divergent series, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, the Twilight series, even Paper Towns couldn’t live up to either its source material or its predecessor film (The Fault in Our Stars).  This time, though, success seems to have actually come, and it comes from an adaptation of a novel from the last films’ sources’ author’s collaborator.

Based on the 2012 novel by David Levithan (who co-wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson with TFiOS‘s John Green), Every Day follows A, a person who’s simultaneously not a person and its – potentially, anyway – every person.  See, every day A wakes up, A is in a new body, essentially possessing the body of someone nearby A’s previous host for a single day at a time.  According to A, it’s always a new person, repeats never occurring.  One day, he wakes up in the body of Justin, a boy who’s dating Rhiannon (somehow, Fleetwood Mac is never mentioned, and I’m still bewildered by this fact).  A becomes infatuated with Rhiannon, and proceeds to try to find her and befriend her in the following days, eventually convincing her of the situation and developing quite the bonds between them.

What could easily have been nothing but limp fluff is somehow made into a mildly provocative little romance flick.  Director Michael Sucsy (whose previous outing was the Nick Sparks adaptation The Vow) and writer Jesse Andrews (best known for his adaptation of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl a couple years ago) really bring their A games here (pun always intended), crafting an engaging and swiftly-flowing story that somehow manages a bit of depth where most of its ilk either don’t try or wind up failing miserably.  Though the connection is and convincing both happen rather quickly (I know I would have had some further questions and issues for A were I in Rhiannon’s place), the story proceeds to introduce some fairly heady subject matter, including the nature of love itself, what it means to be a particular person, the role of gender and inward/outward expression (off all sorts) in a relationship, and even some moral and ethical issues regarding identity, privacy, and environmental impacts weaker stories would have ignored or eschewed.  Though the writing and focal subject matter are rarely all that complex or deep in and of themselves, plenty of layers are deftly and lightly added every so often so as to keep our brains from wandering to other affairs.  There is a particularly provocative and moving speech by A near the end that honestly brings up some fascinating thought experiments and implications on the scenario at hand, and if the film gets enough traction I can see that speech making the rounds in future drama classes and rehearsals.  Some fairly strong acting from the young cast – including Angourie Rice, Owen Teague (who presents the aforementioned speech), and the bevy of bodies variously inhabited by A’s essence/spirit/whatever – anchors the material for us and helps elevate the film into something more than your average teenage romantic drama.

Although I had my issues with certain narrative conveniences and the tendency for most characters to just accept things without much thought or reaction, I was genuinely surprised and impressed by this film.  I found myself really thinking about the issues it raises, and it actually made me wanna read the source novel (which, from what I’ve gathered, differs a decent amount from the film).  I would pretty strongly recommend this to any fan of YA films/books, romance flicks with depth, and light intellectual fare.  Hell, it’d probably be pretty good even for a viewing where it serves as background noise, as it doesn’t go too hard in any one direction, and it’s certainly more entertaining and enriching than some competitors in that arena.

Gotta love it when a film comes out of nowhere (I’d never heard of this thing before yesterday) and delights, eh?