Synopsis:
A young woman falls for a guy with a dark secret and the two embark on a rocky relationship.
My thoughts:
3.5/5 stars
Personally, I just went because I had read the books a few times back in the day and I was kind of excited to see this in the flesh, it wasn’t necessarily good folks.
The entire thing was censured, the only character that was actually dynamic and round was Tessa and every time Hardin (or well Hero) opened his mouth, I turned gayer. Hero’s British accent (I am aware he is a real Brit) was such a turn off to the rest of his persona. He honest to god sounded like something got shoved up his ass and it hurt badly whenever he said something. This guy is also very bad at trying to pull the whole ‘playing hard to get’/ ‘sexy mysterious troubled’ guy thing off. His features never changed, not even when he was crying at one point in this movie. In that aspect Book Hardin is a lot more fleshed out and just overall more in depth.
I did really like the Movie version of Tessa. There’s this part in the first book where she orders a plate of fries without ketchup and the waitress returns with a burger and fries with ketchup and Hardin just loses it. Tessa never speaks up for herself and is actually ashamed of Hardin’s behaviour. In the movie she speaks up before Hardin can and although it’s a little thing, it was one of many small things that made her much more ‘powerful’. This Tessa wasn’t afraid to speak up and the whole innocent Book Tessa was left behind.
I honestly kind of fell in love with Tessa while watching this movie while watching Hardin in this movie just made my eyes bleed and my jaw hurt from laughing so much at his terribly stoic emotionless/expressionless face. Everyone was well casted, hell, even Hardin, but darn hootin’ I would have personally found Hardin just a little bit more attractive if he had had an American accent since his British one made him sound really constipated. There was this moment in the movie where Tessa is taking an astronomy class and Hardin starts pestering her to come outside and she doesn’t respond to him because the Tessa we know wouldn’t just bail on a class and then Hardin is suddenly behind her, we get that typical close up of his mouth next to her ear and then he says something that supposedly had to come across as super sexy or something but it just pretty much made me dry up like a desert. ‘Are you looking at the stars Tessa?’ In the worst possible freaking monotone voice I have ever heard.
I liked the cinematography of this movie, I liked the music they used and the casting was pretty good. The story, although heavily censored, was still very enjoyable. I liked how much diversity they put into it, we have all these different nationalities and then suddenly Steph’s in a gay relationship (they turned Tristan into a girl) and that honestly made my heart so immensely happy.
There were all of these cutesy scenes of Hardin and Tessa together and you really got all that warm bubbly butterflies in meadows and bleating lambs kind of stuff, but the part that really annoyed me is that they totally effed up that ending.
From the ways things were filmed and just headed towards I really thought they were going to end the movie with the two of them, or at least Tessa, moving on without Hardin, alas this was not the case.
Overall pretty okay, would recommend you do not read the books before seeing the movie and vice versa because it will ruin the experience of either of the two.
ReadingInsideaBellJar 