Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between is a romantic-comedy movie directed by Michael Lewen and stars Jordan Fisher and Talia Ryder in lead roles. The movie has a runtime of 84 minutes.
– Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between Review Does Not Contain Spoilers –
Aidan and Clare are your typical high-school lovers who meet each other at a house party. There’s nothing new about how they meet or the way that they spend the night playing at a playground, followed by a walk in the rain and making a breakup pact. There’s nothing interesting about this whole deal either – it’s almost too simple, and you know this pact is going to be absolutely disastrous.
Surprisingly, the movie jumps from the hello to the goodbye, zooming right through a couple of cutesy montages. The movie starts with the goodbye, with the kids going off to college and spending their last night together before they break up.
Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between is the typical rom-com that will keep you zooming through beautiful, romantic moments, some drama and two very sweet kids who will make you wish you were a fraction of as attractive as them. Regardless, the movie reminds me why I don’t get the newer generations and why facing your traumas is oh-so-important.
Aidan and Clare, even though two of the “safest” characters out there, are extremely impressive with their silliness and the emotional maturity of a duck. I was constantly shocked that their parents didn’t talk to them to know whether there was something deeper going on behind their decisions.
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Anyway, even though Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between wants you to know that these kids think with their heads and are mostly pretty mature, I found watching them fight to be extremely exhausting. But then again, these are supposed to be high schoolers; what was I expecting?
Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between focuses on coping with the transition from high school to college and the feelings that kids go through before walking off into this unknown, new life. At least, that’s what it wants to do. In turn, it shows us petty fights between two immature kids who have no depth and no backstories to ground them and then just ends on a “cutesy” note, having not handled any of the toxicity that it introduced previously.
Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between is also a rather monotonous and boring movie that is confusing on so many different fronts. It’s exhausting watching Aidan trying to have his way in everything and Clare trying not to follow in her parent’s footsteps. Their communication is just horrible, and they don’t talk about anything that bothers them so that their relationship can move forward in any way.
Moreover, the story follows the same tried and tested path of getting together, small misunderstandings and then reconciliation. There’s nothing new that happens, and they don’t really showcase the plot in some other way. The resultant movie feels rushed, under-baked and extremely uninteresting. When the movie reaches its conclusion, you realise that a greater part of the movie was spent reliving old memories.
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Coming to the cast, Jordan Fisher and Talia Ryder do their best with the characters they were given, although there’s not much to them other than Clare is reeling from her past, and Aidan runs away from his problems. They don’t really focus on solving these issues, and things get solved very conveniently, so you don’t see them grow in any way.
Jordan Fisher is fine and looks charming as Aidan. It almost felt like, in the end, he was just going to meet Sabrina Carpenter somewhere. Ryder is decent as well but is really bad in the more emotional scenes.
The supporting cast is equally dull and uneventful, and Ayo Edebiri, who has somewhat of a decent screen time, is simply dumbed down to the Black, gay best friend who really doesn’t do anything. Jennifer Robertson, who plays Clare’s mom, is equally underutilised and gives the most annoyingly simple monologue for a minute that brings about world peace.
Also, is it weird that Fisher and Ryder are playing high school kids when the former is 28 years old, and the latter is 19 years old? I have questions about why Fisher was roped into playing a high school kid – he might look young, but… you can have another 19-year-old opposite your female lead as well. I don’t understand the necessity of working with an almost 30-year-old man as someone fresh out of school. It just feels weird.
Summing up: Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between
I can’t even call Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between an entertaining movie because it’s simply just a collage of flashbacks from two high schoolers’ lives. It would’ve made sense had they been interesting or somewhat different, but these are the most generic characters whom you would find in any other show.
It’s a confusing, half-baked mess that really doesn’t give you enough drama or romance to keep you occupied. Plus, that 10-year age difference is not it.
Hello Goodbye and Everything in Between is streaming on Netflix.
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