Before I Fall

Watch this film if you want to know how to waste your most precious asset of all as a filmmaker.

That asset is screen time and this squanders it in abundance, with extraneous characters, unnecessary scenes, copious narration and superfluous moralizing all to conclude in a mediocre ending that ignores its most interesting character even in near death.

If I were to ever for some reason teach a screenwriting class, I would offer this up as what not to do. And I’d pair it up with its obvious progenitor, Groundhog Day, to show what to do.

At least, though, 90% of the spoken lines were by women and there were some individual good scenes. Unfortunately, for the most part the well-acted, high-quality scenes were among those inessential to the plot — such as the scene between a pitch-perfect Liv Hewson as Anna and Zoey Deutch as Sam in a bathroom where they exchange footwear and some frank talk.

The movie tells and tells and tells but never shows, ignores the most compelling characters, and as I mentioned it burns screen time on irrelevancies like there is ever any to spare.

The idea behind this film was sound. A Groundhog Day from a young woman’s perspective could’ve been fun and insightful.

This, however, was neither of those things.

Not really recommended, unless you enjoy poor screenwriting or watching a 98 minute film for 10 minutes of good scenes.