Anything's Possible

Eva Reign plays yet another high school senior in this romcom. The difference is that the actor and the character are both trans. Reign has a charming confidence in her first lead, while Abubakr Ali makes an engaging suitor (and the first flick of its kind with a Arab Muslim boyfriend). This is actor Billy Porter's first directing gig and he does a good job of keeping it fun, while mining some genuine emotions. Also, his hometown of Pittsburg plays a part in the film (look for a quick shot of Porter on a mural). Even with the upbeat energy, the "message" moments tend to get a bit too dominant in the last third. Still, it fills a certain place in the genre and has sufficient personality to make it appealing.

Billy Porter tries to explore so many themes that it ends up drowning himself when he loses focus between this being a romantic story and what to some extent comes to feel like a lecture about the constant discrimination faced by the LGBTQ youth. And it's not that both plot points are at odds with themselves, it's just that Porter clearly doesn't have the expertise to balance his story and therefore it comes to feel aimless and the part that works the most doesn't get to have a better development, because the general problem with romantic teen films involving characters from that community is that they always have to come with an explanation, instead of allowing things to flow naturally. I mean, there's always the "but" in the question and I find it all the more surprising that this argument is still being used considering that the generation this film is aimed at is much, much more informed. It's a romantic story, let it just be a romantic story, not everything has to carry some big external baggage, because one way or another, the point of films like this is supposed to be that their stories stop being seen as taboo and become completely normal.