Crush from writers Kirsten King and Casey Rackham, and director Sammi Cohen is a sweet colour-coated queer coming-of-age film. Most teen films with queer characters still only have one or two, with the majority of the characters being heterosexual. But in Crush, most of the characters we are introduced to are queer. The main character is a high school lesbian aspiring artist and both her love interests are queer, as is her chief suspect for King Pun, the school’s graffiti artist who everyone mistakes her for, forcing her to join the track team to stay in school and buy her time to find the real culprit. AKA rom-com gold, as she is paired with the sister of her “crush.” Following rom-com logic you know she’s going to fall for the sister of her original crush, but that’s part of the fun.
And gone are the days of the gay best friend, and enter the days of the male platonic soulmate. This spoke to me as some of my truest friendships have been with men, and I have a male platonic soulmate.
Rowan Blanchard stars as Paige Evans, who is probably familiar to audiences for headlining Girl Meets World (or for appearing in seasons 4 and 5 of The Goldbergs). Auli’i Cravalho plays AJ, the one you know Paige will end up with from the start of the film. Unless you were a fan of Rise, like myself (which I lovingly referred to as Glee with a winter colour palette), you’re probably more familiar with her voice than her face as she voiced Moana.
The film did a nice two-parter on sibling rivalry and bi-eraser by establishing that AJ came out as bisexual first but everyone forgot that she did once her sister, Gabriela (played by Isabella Ferreira), who is also Paige’s long time crush, came out as a lesbian.
Megan Mullally brings the comedy as Paige’s overly supportive, well-meaning, and totally embarrassing mother who tries too hard, but clearly doesn’t research well based on some of her suggestions. Her storyline with Coach Murray (played by Aasif Mandvi) added another layer of embarrassment and awkwardness for Paige. However, as great as some of the wordplay was, I would’ve preferred to spend more of that time with the high school characters and given that time to Stacey (played by Teala Dunn) and Dillon (played by Tyler Alvarez). It felt like there was more to mine with their relationship outside of their competitive attraction for each other, especially as they seemed to be pushing Paige and AJ together despite Paige’s stated attraction to Gabriela (played by Isabella Ferreira), but we only really saw evidence of it once.
The expectations the film sets for first crush and love might be unreasonable, but that’s part of the enjoyment. LGBTQ+ audiences deserve to see something where everything works out in a rainbow of light and happiness (after a brief setback because what rom-com would be complete without some withheld information blowing up in Paige’s face for a moment). That’s the pleasure of a rom-com.
Crush is available on Hulu in the US and on Disney+ in Canada and most other markets.
© 2022. UniversalCinema Mag.
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