Review: Hulu’s ‘Crush’ Is A Sweet But Clunky Coming-Of-Age Movie
A quippy script and sharp cast save Hulu's sweet and spicy, but clunky, high school girls-in-love comedy 'Crush.'
Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but there are plenty of both — literal, figurative, and animated — in Hulu’s sweetly charming, teen lesbian rom-com Crush (★★★☆☆). In one pivotal scene between two amorous teens, a rainbow, distinct though far in the distance, arcs across the horizon, a bellwether of good fortune for young lovers.
Just as fortunately, director Sammi Cohen, and screenwriters Kirsten King and Casey Rackham, seek to subvert their movie’s candy-coated innocence with a keen edge of tart and bawdy humor that keeps the ship from sinking into cheesy oblivion.
That contrast bears out in the characters, too, with never-been-kissed high school junior Paige, played by Rowan Blanchard, often embarrassed by her oversharing, sex-positive mom Angie, played by Megan Mullally, a comic actress who, of course, knows her way around, over, and through a double entendre.
Angie’s a “cool mom” to the extreme, so fully supportive of lesbian daughter Paige that she gifts her packs of glow-in-the-dark dental dams. And, after Paige joins the Miller High track team to be near her crush Gabby Campos (Love, Victor‘s Isabelle Ferreira), mom Angie develops her own crush on the track coach, portrayed with amusing bluster by Aasif Mandvi.
Mullally and Mandvi get to banter naughtily and abundantly, carrying the comedy torch for the grownups watching. They’re joined on the horny train by Paige’s bestie Dillon (Tyler Alvarez) and his girlfriend Stacey (Teala Dunn), rivals for class president who can’t keep their hands, lips, or bodies off each other.
Meanwhile, Blanchard’s wide-eyed Paige progresses through her affecting, if predictable romantic drama, smitten with Gabby, but distracted by Gabby’s sister AJ, played by Moana‘s Auli’i Cravalho, offering a layered, engaging portrayal of a girl also inexperienced in love.
The movie’s see-saw between rainbow-kissed romance and Vegas-nightclub sex humor is hit-or-miss. Dillon and Stacey’s schtick, in particular, gets old fast, with the pair not allowed much variation on the joke of their uncontainable lust. Michelle Buteau’s wily Principal Collins is a bit one-note, too, but at least that note is reliably funny.
Inside the central love triangle, Blanchard, Cravalho, and Ferreira are basically the film’s straight women (no pun intended), playing out the soapy, high-stakes crush, surrounded by more colorful comic characters, like Addie Weyrich as Miller High’s resident Wiccan lesbian, Chantal.
This high school is refreshingly, if optimistically, full of openly queer kids, secure in their identities. Paige and Gabby have been out since middle school, and AJ, who identifies as bi, appears similarly unbothered about living on the queer spectrum. The parents and faculty we see are super-cool with these kids deciding for themselves who they’ll like or love or be.
Authority mainly rears its head in the film’s driving mystery about unmasking a school vandal, the graffiti artist known as King Pun, who tags the well-funded campus with murals like Smokey Bear warning, “Remember! Only you can fuck the Pa-tree-archy.”
The graffiti (by artist Kayla Fritz) adds a bold, sassy statement to the proceedings, but the mystery of King Pun feels only half-written.
The pacing in several places seems rushed, as if scenes or storylines were cut, and some strain shows in obviously re-recorded dialogue in a few scenes.
First-time feature director Cohen elicits solid work from the cast, but can’t disguise budget limitations that include sets lit and decorated like store displays. The costume department fares better in presenting the tastes and personalities of the people onscreen.
Lively animation — often transposed over action to reflect artist Paige’s vivid imagination — also speaks volumes about our lovelorn lead. As does the well-curated soundtrack, featuring original music by producer-musician St. Panther.
The song “Kerosene,” by McClenney and St. Panther frames an especially graceful flashback montage. It’s one of those conventional rom-com sequences that Crush both leans into and puts just enough of a spin on to keep the audience smiling.
Crush is available for streaming now on Hulu. Visit www.hulu.com.
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