‘Crush’ Review: Hulu’s Teen-Centric Queer Rom-Com Plays It Too Safe
variety.comTomris Laffly Curiously unadventurous for a sex-positive teen romantic comedy, Sammi Cohen’s “Crush” centers its premise on an age-old recipe: an emotionally bemused heroine desperately pursues her supposed soul mate, when her ultimate the one has been right under her nose all along.Still, predictability isn’t the real deficit of this well-meaning and progressive Hulu original that aims to land somewhere in the vicinity of “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “American Pie.” After all, some of the most timeless and irresistible romances stem from tales we’ve all heard a million times before.
What’s jarring in “Crush” is the absence of some requisite dose of youthful mischief, a sense of stakes and perhaps even a lightly scandalous touch, integral to the spirit of many of the genre staples Cohen and co-writers Kirsten King and Casey Rackham attempt to revive on their own terms.
Still, the world “Crush” conjures up is surprisingly timid, despite its inclusive cast, sunny cinematography and refreshing choice of putting an openly gay protagonist in the driver seat of a formula that’s nearly always seen through a straight lens.
It’s a decisively villain-free approach in which everyone, adults and teens alike, feels like they have been generated by an algorithm to represent the most idealistic version of their respective personas instead of real, plausible people.
