Sierra Burgess is a Loser, but More Importantly, She’s Kind of a Dick

Josie Pesce
Sep 7, 2018 · 7 min read

Today Netflix released Sierra Burgess is a Loser, its latest addition to the Teen Comedies in Which Noah Centineo Drives a Jeep category. The film is adapted from the 19th century play Cyrano de Bergerac, but with a 21st century twist: catfishing.

The film rides on the thesis that Fat Girls Deserve Love Too, a sentiment which should be obvious, but of which our society does in fact need constant reminding. In the wake of Netflix’s recent dumpster fire, Insatiable, this message is actually well-timed and well-intentioned, but it folds in on itself because Sierra’s lapses in judgement are more pronounced than her hips.

Sierra Burgess (Shannon Purser) is, you guessed it, a loser. She doesn’t fit the mold of high school hotness (that mold being a pair of size-zero skinny jeans, because by all other accounts, Purser is plenty good-looking), she is, however, smart, funny, and sensitive. Conversely, Veronica (Kristine Froseth) is a class-act bitch who torments Sierra with insulting albeit incorrect literary allusions, because hot people are not only mean, they’re dumb.

In the world of Sierra Burgess, the venn diagram of being hot and not being insufferable overlaps at exactly one point — Jamey (Noah Centineo).

Jamey comes into the picture when he approaches hot Veronica at a diner. He’s dorkishly handsome, emphasis on dork when Veronica points out that the friends he’s with don’t even qualify as handsome. “Only losers hang out with losers,” she says.

You can bet those losers are funny and smart, though! One even has a British accent, despite being portrayed by Mario Revolori, who is from Anaheim. To Jamey’s surprise, Veronica immediately offers up her number, but it’s a big ol’ prank because it’s really Sierra’s number.

The next 30 minutes of the movie is Sierra and Jamey texting.

In one astoundingly on-the-nose scene, Jamey is reminding his loser friends about the insanely hot chick whose number he scored. He says, “I was worried she was one of those pretty girls. Turns out, she’s really smart and really funny.” Jamey clearly subscribes to the venn diagram, as does Inexplicably-British-Friend, who remarks, “mate, you only think that because she’s a smoking piece and you ain’t funny… that’s okay, you don’t have to be. You should send a pic with your shirt off” because this movie is about abandoning superficiality.

The same philosophy comes up time and time again, yet somehow it’s deluded in its self-awareness. Around the midpoint, Sierra cites The Picture of Dorian Gray (don’t forget, she’s smart!!) and explains, “it’s Oscar Wilde’s commentary on society. Basically, since Dorian looks perfect, everybody thinks he is perfect, and since they value his appearance above everything else, he kind of ends up losing his own soul.” It feels like the movie’s big a-ha moment, which it is, but it’s undercut by the revelation that Sierra can sing, because that matters later.

While the boys mull over just how hot Veronica is, Sierra’s friend Dan (RJ Cyler) introduces the specter of catfishing, and the movie narrowly dodges a code of ethics by saying “law is woefully behind technology so I don’t know if [it’s illegal].” With that, we put to bed the idea that what she’s doing is wrong. Dan is the only character who insists that Sierra disclose to Jamey who she really is. He’s misguided in his execution and often makes Sierra visibly uncomfortable, but his morals are in the right place. That, of course, is no fun for Sierra, so she takes a different route.

Veronica gets dumped by her college-freshman-boyfriend because she’s apparently not smart enough. No surprise there, we already know she’s hot and therefore has dust where her brain should be. Not to mention, college freshmen are the gold standard for intelligence. Sierra sees an opportunity in Veronica’s cartoonish display of sorrow — she can lend her ugly-girl-brain in exchange for Veronica’s hot-girl-face, doubling down on the whole “not illegal” catfishing thing.

Sierra begins to tutor Veronica, and we get a glimpse into Veronica’s home life. We gather that she has little demon sisters, a fascist pageant mom, and an apparently dead dad. It’s later revealed that her dad is not dead, but rather left his wife for a 22-year-old. The mother is rightfully hurt by this, but channels her pain and insecurity into aggression targeted at her eldest daughter. We are to deduce that the apple does not fall far from the tree.

This backstory is extremely humanizing for Veronica; it justifies her character, and appears to excuse it in Sierra’s book. The two girls build a pretty special bond that would be satisfying to watch if it wasn’t predicated on manipulating Jamey.

The worst moment of the film comes when Jamey asks Sierra-as-Veronica on a proper date. She agrees, and then has to send the real Veronica in her place. There’s just one rule: Veronica can’t kiss him. Veronica and her hot bitch friends embark on a cringey triple date with Jamey and his loser friends, with Sierra creepily tailing them all the while. Sierra gets a text from Veronica explaining that Jamey wants to give her a ride home, so Sierra stakes out the car to ensure there’s no funny business. Jamey goes in for the kiss, Veronica panics. She stops him, and forces him to close his eyes, making her look insane and him feel insane, while Sierra gears up for her big moment — the kiss with a boy who thinks she’s someone else. It’s presented with all the giddiness and glee of your run-of-the-mill PG-13 smooch, but totally lacks clear consent. Big yikes.

At the end of the second act it’s time for the biggest football game of the year, in case you forgot this was a high school movie. Before the game, Sierra sees Veronica and Jamey kiss. Veronica later explains, “Well, he thinks I’m you, remember? That was the whole plan!” because, duh, I thought you were the smart one, Sierra. Before this, Sierra logs into Veronica’s Instagram using her best guess at a password — Veronica’s ex-boyfriends name. Sierra mutters to herself, “are you really this stupid?” Answer: yes. Because hot.

So, Sierra hacks Veronica because one internet crime wasn’t enough, and posts a sexy selfie of Veronica and her now-ex, blasting to Veronica’s twenty-thousand followers that she was dumped via DM. This happens during the game, making it quite the spectacle. Jamey sees the picture and thinks that Veronica cheated on him, until it’s finally admitted that the whole thing was a ruse. Unsurprisingly, Jamey is pissed because not only was he fake-dated, he was fake-cheated on, and fake-publicly humiliated. But don’t worry, after all that he comes around and takes Sierra to homecoming.

The canon of teen comedies is rife with narratives about teenage boys manipulating and gaslighting their female counterparts. It should be fun to watch these girls give Jamey a taste of that medicine, and it would be if the film framed itself as that sort of romp. However, Sierra Burgess is so committed to the sincerity of its lead that this plot fails gloriously. Maybe it’s intentional. There’s something to be said about Sierra’s post to Veronica’s Instagram. The tables have turned, and Sierra is now a Veronica proxy. With the veil of hotness, Sierra loses her morality and issues this takedown of Veronica, not unlike her literary pal, Dorian Gray.

What’s worse, she fails to really earn back her morality. Veronica is the one who tells Jamey the truth, while Sierra sputters to explain herself, clearly caught off guard that she isn’t yet basking in hot guy glory. Sierra spends the next few minutes of the movie crying and writing a song in lieu of a poetry assignment that she failed to turn in because she was texting a boy. She sends said song to Veronica in lieu of an apology. Veronica sends the song to Jamey.

The song is the film’s lazy attempt at Sierra’s redemption, it’s lyrics boil down to “if I were her, maybe you’d pick me,” and maybe that’s true. Maybe if she weren’t a liar and a creep he’d pick her. The movie makes it harder than it should to know for sure.

All in all, the film is right to star a woman whose body type we don’t get to see in popular film, unless it’s to serve a joke or otherwise classify a character as unappealing. Sierra Burgess does the latter with the intention of dismantling that trope, but it’s unsuccessful because Sierra remains unappealing, but for reasons not having to do with her looks. In the end, Jamey’s the only clear victim of the story, Veronica’s redemption arc is strong, and Sierra’s the closest thing we have to a bad guy. Sierra Burgess is a teetering Jenga set of high school stereotypes and superficiality, with just a few too many blocks left to remove before it can come down.

Veronica puts it perfectly as she reads aloud from Hamlet in the second act’s hot-girl-gets-smart sequence: ‘To thine own self be true.’ Yeah, unless you suck.

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