Dude (2018)

Though I'm not a fan of hers or anything like that, I decided to check out Dude to see Lucy Hale, Aria from Pretty Little Liars, do something different. Well, she does play a different character, but Netflix's film is like most of that show, a waste of time.

So, Dude follows four best girlfriends, Lily (Lucy Hale), Chloe (Kathryn Prescott), Amelia (Alexandra Shipp) and Rebecca (Awkwafina), in the last few weeks of their senior year of high school as they prepare to the deal with life after high school. 

In other words, it's a coming-of-age, that kind of movie with no plot whatsoever which wouldn't have been a problem if the writers did their job. The film tries to provide a deep, insightful look into the life of four abandoned teenagers trying to deal with daddy issues and death, and more, while being constantly high, drunk, and trying to fuck basically everything that breathes, but actually it's just boring. 

And depressing. Actually, depressing is the fact that there are way too many subplots in this film, none of which is properly developed. Not to mention those subplots that are thrown in there all of the sudden only to be completely discarded as the movie moves onto the next scene like nothing happened. There's one subplot that really angered me to be honest. One of the girls, Lily, is raped but she doesn't talk about it. Actually, she makes it look like a normal thing, she accepts it and move one without giving it too much thought. Putting more focus on that issue, that is what the writers were supposed to do. Instead, they took many issues and dealt with them in a very shallow way. 

Netflix

The characters don't get any better. I don't know how much accurate it is (I'm pretty sure nobody throws away more than a half blunt though) as it's been a while since I finished high school and I don't live in the United States --I've never been the cool kid anyway-- but these kids smoke weed all the time and drink and whore around. Also, they have very, very little development. 

There is something about Dude though that took me a little by surprise. No, I'm not talking about Lucy Hale's (first?) topless scene, although it was quite disturbing as Hale still looks like a teenager (she's 28 now), and I just didn't think she'd do something like that, especially since it adds absolutely nothing to the film. I'm talking about her performance as Lily. Though not very developed, the character of Lily is very different from the one she played in Pretty Little Liars, and I gotta say she does a pretty good job conveying some of the character's struggles.

Ultimately, Dude is a very forgettable coming-of-age that doesn't have anything new to offer. I only hope Olivia Milch, co-writer and director, did a better job in Ocean's 8.