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- 2019
- PG-13
- Warner Bros.
- 1 h 40 m
- 2019
- PG-13
- Warner Bros.
- 1 h 40 m
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 neve...
Directed By: Ry Russo-Young
Written By: Tracy Oliver, Nicola Yoon
- 2019
- PG-13
- Warner Bros.
- 1 h 40 m
- 2019
- PG-13
- Warner Bros.
- 1 h 40 m
The Sun Is Also a Star
52
5.8
Where to Watch
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 neve...
Directed By: Ry Russo-Young
Written By: Tracy Oliver, Nicola Yoon
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
52
36% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
60% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
52
36% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
60% Mixed
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
It’s all quite wistfully romantic, and mostly winningly so, despite the sometimes wise-way-beyond-their-years dialogue and not always plausible plot.
"Before Sunrise" is a great movie. The Sun is also a Star isn’t. It’s not horrible and it may please its target audience but it misses an opportunity to have a deeper and less surgically-targeted impact than what it achieves.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 22 User Ratings
5.8
32% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
55% Mixed
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
14% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 22 User Ratings
5.8
32% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
55% Mixed
12 Ratings
12 Ratings
14% Negative
3 Ratings
3 Ratings
"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.
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If its heart-pounding romance doesn’t make you cry, its sorely needed sense of optimism will surely make you smile.
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.
Oliver and director Ry Russo-Young (Before I Fall) cherry-pick a few of these digressions and give them an artful, collage-like treatment; they don’t go far enough to mask the skimpiness of the story, which has been whittled down to Natasha and Daniel almost exclusively.
The leads are both charming, but they can’t override the tooth-aching sincerity of the script, or the cardboard conflicts that propel it.
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.
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, 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.
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[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]
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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.
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