Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

As a young queer adult, I have been actively seeking and consuming queer YA media for the last several years. This movie has to be among the most disappointing pieces of media I've consumed in this hunt. It plainly was not great. The cinematography was at times off-putting, with weird fishbowl lens effects and shaky camera movements at times. These are camera effects that can enhance a movie's storytelling, but in this case did not. The fishbowl lens disrupted the viewer's movie watching experience, and was only used to make transitions more "interesting". The shaky camera was used in an adequate way, but with way too much movement. The main character, Naomi, was completely unlikeable. She's incredibly controlling of her best friend (Ely) and shows a blatant disregard for the emotions of the people around her. One of the lines in her opening monologue is something along the lines of "I lied when I told Ely I was okay with gay. I'm okay with it, just not with him being gay", which sets off so many red flags. She has an ongoing romantic relationship with a boy (who she refers to as "Bruce 2"), but whenever Ely mentions kissing a boy, or having a romantic relationship in any capacity, she becomes incredibly hostile and upset. She uses Bruce 2 (as well as her and Ely's neighbor, Bruce 1) in many capacities. She repeatedly makes it clear that she doesn't care about either Bruce, and uses them merely to help aid her fantasy that Ely might like her back, which is impossible, because he's gay. However, as she is the main character, Naomi is painted in a sympathetic light, which I simply do not buy. I don't believe she cares about Bruce 1, Bruce 2, or Ely in the way she thinks she does. Ely, the secondary character, is not without fault. He does kiss Bruce 2 while Naomi is still dating him- however, Ely does actively try to open a conversation up with Naomi about it. And while he did a horrible thing, Naomi shows (not for the first or last time) that she simply does not care about Bruce 2, while it is obvious that Ely actually does. She shuts down the conversation very flippantly, and later tries to play victim- when she loses Ely, not when she loses Bruce 2. (Honestly, to show the difference in how little Naomi cares for Bruce 2, she calls him 'Bruce 2' for the entire movie. Ely calls him 'Bruce'. Your significant other should not have a number after their name to denote who they are.) No great messages, no great role models, just bad stereotypes and toxic relationships. An excellent movie if you want to see what a bad friend is like. I cannot think of a simple redeeming feature of this movie. Maybe if it was told from Ely's perspective, it'd be bearable. Or perhaps if there was something to give the impression that Naomi actually cared a single iota about someone other than herself. I could go on about the other awful parts of this movie, but this review is long enough.

This story features a best friendship between a straight girl and homosexual boy. The girl has a crush on the boy. The boy betrays her and starts seeing her boyfriend. As viewers, we are meant to view the girl as being too pushy because she has a crush on her friend as opposed to thinking that the boy should have been honest with her and set boundaries in the friendship. Horribly sexist. On the bright side, at least some attempt was made to show a friendship between a gay boy and straight girl onscreen.