By Travis Johnson
Based on the YA novel by Nicola Yoon, Everything Everything follows the blossoming romance between Maddy (Amandla Stenberg), a girl confined to her house due to a horribly compromised immune system, and Olly (Nick Robinson), the new boy in the neighbourhood. Lessons will probably by learned, most likely about life and worth living it is.
This seems the be the latest in the “dying girl” YA subgenre, which boasts the likes of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Fault is in Our Stars, both of which come complete with their own raft of problematic assumptions. Now, Maddy may not wind up dying in this one (haven’t read the book; ain’t gonna), but she’s almost certainly serving a similar narrative purpose. Still, it’s always possible that Everything Everything bucks the trend. We’ll see come May 18, when it slips into cinemas.
