Five Feet Apart

Why can’t Hollywood come up with any original ideas anymore? Five Feet Apart plays like a blatant rip-off of a House episode, or is it Grey’s Anatomy? That’s right, it’s Grey’s Anatomy, specifically Season 7, an episode called “Not Responsible” (I’m so embarrassed for knowing/realizing this!). Basically in that nauseating episode, Dr. Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) yells at this “cystic fibrosis teenage couple” about how lucky they’ve been to avoid infection. She tells them that the lungs one of them is about to receive are “a gift” and she doesn’t want them squandered. The teen getting the lungs says their “love is a gift, too” and Teddy tells them to end their relationship or he won’t get the lungs. This corny, unbelievable treatment basically mirrors the plot of Five Feet Apart, except the teens are now played by better looking, more famous teens: Haley Lu Richardson (The Edge of Seventeen, Split) and Cole Sprouse (Riverdale’s Jughead). Of course, they have to throw in an arbitrary token gay character (Moises Arias) who also has cystic fibrosis somehow, just to make it extra “special.” The whole cinematic experience is not only preposterous but it’s insulting to the audience’s intelligence, not that the audience for this kind of tripe has any. The movie could have been called The Fault In Our Stars 2: This Time It’s Personal for all I care – same shit!

[PG-13]