Stunning debut for lead
Allowing someone’s help is a gift to that person key lesson
Amber Appleton gives, gives, gives. The 17-year-old spends her free time teaching English to a group of Korean women. She visits a nursing hometo hand out free doughnuts and raises moneyfor school projects. She adopts a tiny dog and puts its needs ahead of her own. She makes fried egg sandwiches for friends. Amber Appleton is always helping, helping, helping.
So when slowly, ever so slightly, her life starts to collapse, Amber Appleton has to learn to accept the very thing she’s always handing out: help. Have plenty of tissues nearbywhen you watch the top-notch Netflix film All TogetherNow, a teary tale of fellowship.
The movie is based on Silver Linings Playbook author Matthew Quick’s novel Sorta Like a Rock Star and is elevated by a touching, marvellous Auli’i Cravalho as the girl wholoves giving but not necessarily receiving.
Cravalho’s Amber is amusically gifted high school student with
aspirations to attend Carnegie Mellon but her personal life is close to the edge: She and her singlemumare homeless, sleeping in one of the school buses hermumdrives for work.
Amber doesn’t let it get her down. “I’m great. Never better,” she insists. She turns negatives into positives: “I’m
the only teenager in Americawho doesn’t have a cellphone. Howcool is that?”
Mum(an excellent Justina Machado) frets about the future and considers returning to an abusiveman just for the shelter, but her daughter stays optimistic: “We’re gonna be awesome. We’re gonna be spectacular.”
But little by little, Amber is stripped of all the things that give hermeaning and security. Aharder, darker Amber emerges. “I have this under control!” she insists, as she postpones key meetings and works long hours at dismal jobs. (Tip your doughnut shop workers, folks.)
This alarms her motley crew of friends, including a maybe-boyfriend (a solid Rhenzy Feliz), her drama club teacher (an underused Fred Armisen) and a sour-outside-but-sweetunderneath nursinghomeresident (Carol Burnett, yes, that Carol Burnett, absolutely incapable of disappointing).
“You do so muchfor other people, but when you need just a little bit of help, you push us all away,” says the maybe-boyfriend.
“What is so bad about needing help?”
The filmmayendwith all the lose ends tied up into fancy bows, but its heart is pure.
Director Brett Haley ( All the Bright Places, Hearts Beat Loud) thankfully lets the scenes breathe, with quiet poignancy. Somemoments are so still you can hear a leather jacket stretch. The script also doesn’t insult the audience by adding unnecessary descriptive lines. It helps when you have an actress likeCravalho, who allows us to see pools of sadness, yearning and hunger behind her eyes. The Moana singer also gets to belt out amoving tune. You couldn’t ask for more from her in her first leading role. She’s spectacular.