Alex Strangelove is a 2018 comedy about a high school senior with a wonderful girlfriend and a bright future ahead of him with plans to achieve his last teenage milestone by losing his virginity.
We all want to get laid. That’s the driving force behind what would seem an uncountable host of teen sex romps and coming-to-age movies for decades, which spring from what appears to be a very shallow well. In the age of global social media and growing sexual tolerance, many filmmakers are exploring the outliers of the more common tropes in the genre, which would immediately seem like great potential for some edgier stories. Craig Johnson‘s new film Alex Strangelove wants to be that, tackling bits of this with some genuine impact and few solid moments that chime right, even as it wallows in a few pools of stagnant water.
Alex Truelove (Daniel Doheny) meets new student Claire (Madeline Weinstein) in his freshman year of high school and the two hit it off from the start, both interested in zoology and as such, creating a series of videos that equate school with the wilds of nature. By the time they are seniors, they are a happy couple, popular trendsetters that are so close, Alex even wonders to himself if she’s ‘the one.’ Problem is, they haven’t had sex yet, and here’s the twist: it’s Claire who wants to do it and Alex who is holding off. Why? Well, as he discovers at a party when he stumbles into a room with a guy named Elliott (Antonio Marziale), everything isn’t so cut and dry. Poor Alex doesn’t quite get the whole ‘gay’ thing and certainly not that he might be one, and this puts him on a strange journey of discovery.
Alex Stranglove teeters on a thin line, where it dips into two sides, keeping partially committed to its raunchy heredity while trying to stage a new tributary, offering up plenty of genuine emotional moments that find some punch. It’s a bit dizzying but certainly not new, a number of movies stretching the boundaries of what coming-of-age means in terms of breaking linear definitions. Still, Alex Strangelove isn’t playing with subtlety or all that much nuance, these characters broadly defined and spoken, even if they are charming to watch.
Using all the archetypes at his disposal, Johnson, who wrote the script, has a few sharp moments of revelation, especially with Claire, who is a terrific character made all the more so by Weinstein’s energetic and passionate performance. She is so grounded and well-written, she becomes the other side of the see-saw, helping to keep balance when the rest of the film doesn’t always know where it wants to go.
That’s not to say there aren’t times when Alex Strangelove hits its marks. A confused Alex leads him into a series of awkward encounters that test his well, direction, and in many ways, it reminds me of some old classics, such as when his cereal boxes morph into imagined sexual flavor options, like how two animated hamburgers came to life in John Cusack‘s Better Off Dead. There’s also a wonderful moment in a hotel room that is handled surprisingly well, packing an emotional wallop that is well-earned.
However, the film entirely isn’t as strong, dedicated to antics that don’t quite feel aligned with its core, including Alex’s party buds who at one point spend more than a thousand dollars to smuggle in a toxic jungle frog in which they hope to lick for its hallucinatory effects. This leaves the film in a sort of safe zone where it never gets as raucous at it could or as touching as it should. What might have been a significant story ends up a disappointment.