Review of Every Day (2018) by Natalia F — 27 Feb 2018

Adapting books into movies is always a challenge, but turning a YA novel into a good movie is especially challenging. With movies like Every Day, the key is making sure the premise doesn't come across as gimmicky. Like many adaptations before it, Every Day fails to overcome that pitfall.

Although the movie is named Every Day, it actually appears to be an amalgamation of both the book, Every Day, and its companion novel. That creative decision makes it unavoidable that parts of the novel get condensed for the film. A lot of interesting side stories in the book get dropped simply because there are too many of them to include. In practice, however, that means a lot of what would have made this movie more than just a gimmick gets lost in translation. To be fair, this movie does address some of the broader implications of its own premise, but they're presented so unevenly that it seems like the filmmakers are doing the bare minimum. In addition, the omissions this movie makes from the books reek of sanitizing in that peculiar American way. We can't expose teenagers to marijuana use, but cigarettes, which actually kill you, are perfectly fine for the big screen. Beyond being silly, those changes make the main plot a lot less compelling.

It doesn't help that Every Day's plot is presented with uneven pacing. Kudos to the filmmakers for resisting the urge to provide exposition through narration, but each plot point arrives very abruptly. The climax comes out of nowhere, and its conclusions are unearned because they're reached too quickly. The worst offense happens midway through the movie. A dream-like flashback sequence occurs in the middle of a romantic scene that, for a moment, made me wonder if the movie was about to end. There are a couple of good things this movie does. The cinematography is pretty good. In one scene, the camera revolves around a character to visualize her confusion. The young cast also does a respectable job. It's pretty impressive that a diverse group of actors manage to pull off the same personality inhabiting different bodies. That being said, none of that is enough to make up for this movie's many missteps. Overall, Every Day is a mediocre movie.