Every Day
Director: Michael Sucsy
Writer: Jesse Andrews
Based on: David Levithan’s novel
Cast: Angourie Rice, Justice Smith, Jeni Ross, Lucas Jade Zumann, Rory McDonald, Katie Douglas, Jacob Batalon, Ian Alexander, Sean Jones, Colin Ford, Jake Sim, Nicole Law, Karena Evans, Owen Teague, Hannah Alissa Richardson, Debby Ryan, Maria Bello
Seen on: 20.6.2018

Plot:
Every day, A wakes up in a different body. It’s always the body of somebody as old as them, but it’s never the same body twice. Ever since they can remember, this has been their existence, and A is pretty much resigned to it by now, never telling anybody about it in the 17 years they have existed this way. That is, until they wake up in Justin’s (Justice Smith) body and meet Justin’s girlfriend Rhiannon (Angourie Rice). The two spend a magical day together and A realizes that they might just have found a life they are not willing to let go all that easily.

Every Day was nice and it did manage to get rid of some of the things that I criticized about the novel, but it still wasn’t as radical as I would have liked it to be – or as the story or the main character would have demanded it to be.

As was already the case with the novel, it is surprising how heteronormatively this story can be told, given the fact that it’s a love story with a non-binary main character. But they managed here again. At least, they lost most of the fatmisia and the transmisia of the novel – and actually managed to cast a trans actor for a trans role. Although they didn’t improve everything from the book – the entire Alexander thing became even creepier in the movie version than it already was in the novel.

But it would have needed a deeper approach to such a radical character, really digging into the gender stuff and questions about how much we are our bodies or not – I wish they had thought things to some more radical conclusions.

Still, it’s an entertaining and sweet film. The cast is mostly pretty good, although I have to say that Lucas Jade Zumann, Debby Ryan and Justice Smith completely stole the show whenever they were on screen. Particularly Debby Ryan stole my heart.

It didn’t blow me away or anything, but I didn’t expect it to. And it was nice enough to watch, even thouhg I still grieve a little for the story it could have told. But at least it’s something with regards to queer representation.

Summarizing: Cute, but less than it could have been.