Parents' Guide to Beautiful Disaster

This suggestive adaptation of Jamie McGuire's "new adult" novel is ultimately unbelievable and unremarkable, even with its charming stars. A little background: It's important to know the distinction between "young adult" (YA) and "new adult" (NA) books. The latter is a relatively new genre of books that focuses on college-age or early-20-something main characters who have more mature (i.e., sexual) coming-of-age stories. While young adult books often include romance, they rarely include explicit descriptions of sexual experiences, whereas racy material is an integral part of the NA genre -- which includes BookTok favorite authors like Colleen Hoover and the After series. The premise of the source book for Beautiful Disaster, however, is a lot more ridiculous than the regular "good girl/bad boy" premise of that series. Forget insta-love -- this is a tale of insta-lust.

The bet on which the plot hinges is utter nonsense. It's difficult to suspend disbelief that Abby would have felt compelled to go through with fulfilling it, even with her upbringing. Speaking of Abby's backstory, Brian Austin Green pops up as Abby's gambler dad, whose bad habits and even worse debts she's trying to escape. And Travis is an ultimate pickup artist alpha male, whom Sprouse can't quite make appealing enough to erase the many red flags about Travis and Abby's relationship. Gardner is serviceable as the girl with a secret past, but pretty much no one but the central couple have anything to do, much less perform. Although writer-director Roger Kumble tries to add a few layers to the screenplay, they don't quite work. Author Jamie McGuire also doesn't do any favors for the movie with her controversial social media presence. This is a skippable story for all but the biggest of McGuire's fans.