Everything, Everything
What if The Boy in the Plastic Bubble had access to the internet? Teen romance Everything, Everything provides answers to that and a slew of far less interesting questions through a racially diverse, tech-savvy update to the 1976 made-for-TV classic (this time, based on a bestselling YA novel by Nicola Yoon). Amandla Stenberg—who stole the spotlight as Rue in The Hunger Games—stars as a girl who’s allergic to everything, maintaining her health by never leaving her compulsively clean and hermetically sealed home. She glides through her sterile environment wearing shades of white and pale blue. She is romantic, poetic, and far deeper than girls who have left their houses. But Everything, Everything and The Boy in the Plastic Bubble share a truly interesting premise: How much do you compromise your health for your happiness? Unfortunately, they also share cop-out endings. SPOILER ALERT: Both solve the dilemma by declaring the illness irrelevant/nonexistent. Everything, Everything does it in a more dramatic, twist-ending type reveal, but is equally lazy.
by Julia Raban