Sierra Burgess is a Loser
As a shameless rom-com connoisseur, I have been busy the past several months thanks to Netflix’s recent slew of new romantic comedies. The lineup, beginning with A Christmas Prince last December and reaching its zenith with The Kissing Booth, Ibiza, Set It Up, and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before this summer, has left the rom-com community revitalized and hopeful.
On its surface, Sierra Burgess is a Loser has all the promise of a movie we could love. The color palette is artfully desaturated and the cast is likeable, although the screenplay’s tendency towards forced humor occasionally impedes their performances. Most importantly, the movie has a moral: fairy tale romances are for everyone, even teenagers on the geeky side.
In the tradition of classic rom-coms Clueless and 10 Things I Hate About You — both modern adaptations of centuries-old literature — Sierra Burgess is a retelling of Edmund Rostand’s 19th-century play Cyrano de Bergerac. The movie follows Sierra Burgess (Shannon Purser), a high school senior who falls into all the cinematic stereotypes of someone ‘uncool’: good at school, not size two, and in the marching band. But when Sierra receives a text from football player Jamie (Noah Centineo) who mistakenly believes he is texting popular cheerleader Veronica (Kristine Froseth), Sierra decides to take advantage of her mistaken identity rather than confess.
Rarely do catfishing stories have such happy endings.
When it comes to rom-coms, I want giddy meet-cutes and gooey dialogue—the gushier the story, the better. Unfortunately, the way Sierra Burgess handles its catfishing premise is a bit too creepy to stomach, particularly in an age where we as a society are beginning to recognize that the experiences of #MeToo are not exclusive to women. For all of Sierra’s twisted antics, she never truly has to reckon with the gravity of her deceptive behavior. This disappointing turn is most agonizing in the ending, which seems all too neat given the disturbing nature of the circumstances.
In all fairness, Sierra Burgess is a Loser was always going to have a tough time following the utterly adorable and culturally significant juggernaut To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. This inevitable comparison is due, in particular, to the movies’ shared lead: teen phenom Noah Centineo. Both films are marketed as romantic comedies that support increased representation of those whose stories are rarely seen on screen — Sierra Burgess with a plus-sized lead and To All the Boys with an Asian-American lead. But whereas To All the Boys seamlessly integrates its social commentary into its story in a way that is both dimensioned and subtle, Sierra Burgess leans into it such that the movie parodies what it appears to address.
Even if we look past the movie’s troubling relationship with consent, there remains a fundamental disparity between its intended message and its actual message. Sierra Burgess boasts the breaking down of harmful stereotypes, but reinforces them in spite of itself. Would it have been so unrealistic for Sierra Burgess to find love without the need for manipulation and games in the first place? I’ve never been one to scorn a film with a good, old-fashioned love plot, but its mushy cliches have to pay off — and Sierra Burgess is still in the red.
