“Every Day”, based upon the novel of the same name by David Levithan, is an incredibly strong and extraordinarily unique story that is bogged down by uneven dialogue and a few cringeworthy moments of terrible acting.
“Every Day” is the story of A who is a person who wakes up in a different person’s body every day, hence the title. The film starts with A waking up in the body of Justin (Justice Smith), a high school jock who happens to be dating Rhiannon (Angourie Rice). After spending the day with Rhiannon in Justin’s body A begins to fall madly in love with her. The story and premise are absolutely astounding as it is not something in any other romantic drama that I have ever seen.
A is a slightly difficult character, as numerous actors must portray the same character. The actors’ talents range from fantastic to downright hard to watch. The two stand outs on the fantastic side are Owen Teague and Lucas Jade Zumann. These two actors put on an outstanding two-character performance as both A and the person they inhabit. You can physically see the connection that these actors as A have with Rhiannon. These actors also manage to seem like entirely different people when they’re not channeling A.
Angourie Rice impresses here as she did in Shane Black’s 2016 film “The Nice Guys”. She delivers a performance that succeeds in making most scenes with the lackluster dialogue feel fresh and worth watching. Occasionally, though, a combination of poor writing and this young actor’s inexperience show as she fails to make a scene with awkward dialogue feel natural.
The writing here is often times as messy as it can be brilliant, when a scene of compelling back and forth talking between characters turns into something ultimately uncomfortable to watch. The actors try their best to make these scenes work, but they can’t fix the errors of the screenwriter.
About half-way though the movie we’re treated to a remarkable scene that takes place on a high school football field. In this scene Rice’s Rhiannon and Teague’s A are having a date night on the field making bubbles, running around, and shooting water guns all set to BØRNS’ “Electric Love”. The reason this scene works so well is the excellent camera work and the authentic chemistry between the two actors. This scene feels as if the actors were just left to improvise and are relying on nothing more than the raw chemistry between them. At the same time the camera moves feel so deliberate and precise that the entire scene is a joy to watch.
There is a moment that is worth mentioning because of how ineptly edited it is. There is a pivotal scene in which Rhiannon is talking to her mother (Maria Bello) while her sister (Debby Ryan) is listening in on their conversation. The scene is so poorly edited that when it cuts away from the two talking to Debby Ryan, the audience watches as absolutely no scene of where she is or even how she is listening in on this conversation. Ryan is lit differently than the rest of the cast and appears to be in a shot from a completely different scene that was clumsily thrown in at that moment.
The weaknesses of “Every Day” do not out weight the positives in this heavily flawed film that manages to be an original and compelling romantic drama. My score for “Every Day” is a 7.3/10.
“Every Day” hits theaters on Friday, February 23, 2018
