The Sun Is Also a Star

Name: The Sun Is Also a Star
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: May 17, 2019
Duration: 100 min
Rating: 52
Cast: Anais Lee, Anfernee Olivier, Annie Pisapia, Assibey Blake, Camrus Johnson

2019

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Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 19 Ratings

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5.6

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5.6	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 19 Ratings

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The Sun Is Also A Star

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Movie Details & Credits

Warner Bros. | Release Date: May 17, 2019 | PG-13

Starring: Anais Lee, Anfernee Olivier, Annie Pisapia, Assibey Blake, Camrus Johnson, Cathy Shim, Charles Melton, Faith Logan, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Jake Choi, John Leguizamo, Jordan Williams, Kay Day, Keong Sim, Matt Post, Matthias Sebastiun Garry, Miriam A. Hyman, Yara Shahidi

Summary: “What if I told you I could get you to fall in love with me…?” College-bound romantic Daniel Bae (Charles Melton) and Jamaica-born pragmatist Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi) meet—and fall for each other—over one magical day amidst the fervor and flurry of New York City. Sparks immediately fly between these two strangers, who might never“What if I told you I could get you to fall in love with me…?” College-bound romantic Daniel Bae (Charles Melton) and Jamaica-born pragmatist Natasha Kingsley (Yara Shahidi) meet—and fall for each other—over one magical day amidst the fervor and flurry of New York City. Sparks immediately fly between these two strangers, who might never have met had fate not given them a little push. But will fate be enough to take these teens from star-crossed to lucky in love? With just hours left on the clock in what looks to be her last day in the U.S., Natasha is fighting against her family’s deportation as fiercely as she’s fighting her budding feelings for Daniel, who is working just as hard to convince her they are destined to be together. … Expand

Director: Ry Russo-Young

Genre(s): Drama, Romance

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 100 min

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Awards & Rankings

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Critic Reviews

Moira Macdonald

May 16, 2019

It’s all quite wistfully romantic, and mostly winningly so, despite the sometimes wise-way-beyond-their-years dialogue and not always plausible plot. Read full review

Liam Lacey

May 16, 2019

Watching the teen romance The Sun Is Also a Star, starring the splendid-looking young couple Yara Shahidi (Blackish) and Charles Melton (Riverdale’s Reggie)), is something like wading through fields of pink candy floss and suddenly finding a speck of grit. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Christy Lemire

May 16, 2019

The leads are so lovely and the city is so shimmery that it’s hard not to get caught up in its spell — for a while, at least, until its corny coda destroys whatever goodwill the film has generated. Read full review

Caroline Siede

May 15, 2019

Although the big-screen adaptation of Nicola Yoon’s best-selling young adult novel finds welcome specificity in its world and character building, it never rises above the most generic of platitudes in its central teen love story. Read full review

Johnny Oleksinski

May 16, 2019

With stakes so high, the movie should pack a punch. But while it keeps its eye on the stars, its feet never leave the ground. Read full review

Movie Nation Roger Moore

May 15, 2019

But if you’re waiting for that heartbeat-skipping moment that big screen romances have to deliver to come off, don’t bother your cardiologist. The Sun is Also a Star can’t deliver one. Read full review

Oliver Jones

May 16, 2019

This is a movie that talks endlessly about emotion but displays none of it — and the same can be said for all that destiny chatter. Read full review

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User Reviews

GreatMartin

May 21, 2019

"The Sun Is Also A Star" has everything going for it so why does it just miss being an exciting love story? The leads, Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, are an attractive couple who meet 'cute'--he saves her from being run over--and the premise is an interesting one. He believes in love, she"The Sun Is Also A Star" has everything going for it so why does it just miss being an exciting love story? The leads, Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, are an attractive couple who meet 'cute'--he saves her from being run over--and the premise is an interesting one. He believes in love, she doesn't and, via the screenplay, he has 24 hours to prove it to her. DUH! Guess what happens?

His parents are immigrants from South Korea who own a successful black hair care product store in Harlem and she has been living in New York for 9 years with her Jamaican parents who are about to be deported.

A lot of successful love stories have been filmed in New York City and "The Sun Is Also A Star" takes advantage of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs with aerial shots, walks through the city parks and streets and even a tram ride from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island and many glorious shots of the Statue of Liberty.

The soundtrack, except for a karaoke scene, adds a lot but.... There isn't a reason this movie shouldn't involve the audience's emotions but it doesn't. Maybe if more had been looked into regarding the immigrant aspect it would have rounded out the story of the lovers more.

John Leguizamo should have been brought more into the story because the scenes with him would have given more meaning to the fact versus fate argument that motivates the love story. (Besides they never explain the accident he was in which was distracting!)

"The Sun Is Also A Star" has a lot going for it but just not enough, none of the 'magic' that makes 'happily ever after".

PS Don't leave when the screen goes dark or you will miss the ending.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

bataguila

Oct 2, 2019

Lo único bueno es manhattan, la dejan muy activa, sorprendente, infinita, imposible de recorrer. La relación entre los protagonista es irreal, y el final es lo peor, ella le jode la vía a él.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

hnestlyonthesly

Oct 7, 2019

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The Sun Is Also A Star is probably better as a book, or a trailer for that matter.

My two predictions about The Sun Is Also A Star going in were that there would be a lot fewer artistic cutaways in the actual movie compared to the trailer and that the action of the story would span no longer than the hour of the actual “date” and that we would be left on a cliffhanger about what was to come afterwards. It turns out, yes, there were not that many more cutaways with juxtaposed image clouds in the film, but the structure of the plot runs far away from Linklater’s Before trilogy style–in ways that border on the absurd, the ridiculous, and the absurdly ridiculous.

I’m writing this in the spirit of one who does not expect you to end up seeing this tryhard of a **** You Trump romance featuring an interracial couple that’s 50% undocumented, or at least in the spirit of one who goes in fully cognizant of the brittle quality of life’s small joys, the rare and exquisite alchemy of cheese and suspended disbelief. This is the moment when I make a joke about how fun it was to watch two 28-year-olds play make believe as high school kids, but after doing the most cursory of Google searches, I should admit that joke would only be half right, as our lead Tasha is played by an actual teenager, Yara Shahidi from Larry Wilmore’s wonderful Black-ish, while the unbelievably 18-year-old Daniel Bae is played by the very believably 28 year old Charles Melton from Riverdale, where he fits in a lot more seamlessly amongst a bevy of kids in their early twenties playing teens.

Regardless, the premise of this film is at once pretty adorable while also being low-key creepy. A boy, Daniel, who has better things he should be doing, is derailed from a day of end-of-school-year chores by a girl who looks up at the ceiling in Grand Central Station, something “no one ever does,” despite the fact that it seems like EVERY person in a rom com that’s ever visited NYC ends up doing just that. Can someone link/make me to a supercut of all the people who’ve done this over the years? Anyway, once he decides that “destiny” has brought them together, he decides to… follow–yes, let’s say follow and not “stalk”–her around the city until the correct moment when he can save (?) her from a reckless driver in a way that makes her amenable to listen to him for long enough to strike up a report, at which point he says that he can “make” her fall in love with him (by an actually kind of cute method, all things considered).

If you can brush past the set up though, you’re in for a treat, because these two actually have some great chemistry. Wife says she liked the fact that Daniel is portrayed as a the rose-tinted romantic for a change, so that Tasha can play the cynic, but I think there are ways in which her hard-nosed posture shows cracks from the very beginning, the way that she is fighting for her family’s immigration status long-past the point of no return, so to speak, and how her resistance to a relationship with Daniel actually puts the ball in her court to turn all dewy-eyed and giggly, since he’s already on board.

In any other film, we would ask ourselves, “Why didn’t they just get married?” to solve all their problems, which is what requires our two heroes to be suspended in a perpetual state of teenhood, like Bart and Lisa Simpson, like Arthur after his twenty-second season as a boy-aardvark, like the boys and girls from Peanuts, like mosquitoes in amber. Because they are not of the age of consent they are beholden to their parents’ whims. Their lives are not their own. On this premise rests the drama of the film. The least believable part of the film to me, as a child from a bi-racial household with an Asian parent is the fact that these two kids stayed out all night without calling in and were able to return to their home without being killed on the spot. I could swallow the fact that Daniel and Tasha “fell asleep” in a park in May without being stabbed or robbed, but the moment they walk into Tasha’s apartment with 15 unanswered calls from Mom without a prodigious ass-whooping, the entire physics of the world started to break down for me.

John Leguizamo plays the most well-connected lawyer in New York City with the least effective means of addressing an immigration case (a personal meeting between the hours of 5pm and 9am with a judge), who promises a lot and predictably fails to deliver.

Check it out if you are willing to turn your brain off for 90 minutes and you don’t mind a “5 Years Later” time card to resolve the film for you at the very end.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

The3AcademySins

Jan 4, 2020

I have a lot of mixed feelings about The Sun Is Also A Star. There were parts of this movie that I thought were truly romantic and beautiful, and really well developed. On the other hand, there are parts of this movie that I found to be utterly insufferable. For the most part, theI have a lot of mixed feelings about The Sun Is Also A Star. There were parts of this movie that I thought were truly romantic and beautiful, and really well developed. On the other hand, there are parts of this movie that I found to be utterly insufferable. For the most part, the performances are okay, if a little corny. This film kind of feels like a young adult's concept of love, which would be brilliant if it didn't rely so heavily on these pithy intellectual explanations and serendipity taking us along for the ride. The conflict is good, ideas are good, and I could even see a film discussing the connection between scientific reason and fate. It's just a little underdeveloped here. At the end of the day, this movie is a standard romance, and nothing more.… Expand

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

JLuis_001

Jun 4, 2019

I know romantic films cannot be entirely true, I mean c'mon, you have to play a little, but this story will challenge anyone, even lovers of the genre.

I can say that it's okay to be corny from time to time, but it's not about deceiving yourself and be taken for a fool.

1 of 1 users found this helpful10

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