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WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
Kyle Moore (Ross Lynch) is a teenager who after being uprooted by his parents' separation and unable to fit into his new hometown, happens upon a magical app that causes his social media updates to come true.
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
Adult-looking Kyle Moore is somehow a teenage underdog struggling to fit in at a new school despite the fact that he is a white, blonde, handsome and muscular and clearly not younger than 21-year old heterosexual male.
His parents are separated and he can't surf in New England so obviously life sucks for him right now except for the fact that it doesn't, he's just whining about his first world problems but we digress.
Kyle struggles to fit into the clearly defined, lazily conceived social order at his new school where everyone is a stereotype. The jocks are the most popular guys in school, throwing the best parties and dating the hottest girls and - obviously - being total jerks towards Kyle and making his life difficult. Because Kyle is precisely the fodder bullies look for right? (insert heavy dose of sarcasm).
His best friend is a nerdy sounding, awkward and nerdy looking overweight social outcast dude that you just know is going to get food thrown at him sometime in the movie. You know the type. The gay character adds nothing but sass and his role seems to be important but is reduced to nothing because all the gay dude is good for is being a fashionista with dramatic one-liners.
Writers take note: gay and mean is not a personality or a character. All the characters of colour exist on the sidelines so I guess that’s another stereotype they tick off the list. Aside from the cast of cookie-cutter characters being terrible, the story is quite good and full of plot twists and unexpected moments. Speaking of plot twists - I lied - the story is actually incredibly superficial and predictable but perhaps I’m expecting too much of a film aimed at people who can't even buy beer yet.
In a film about a magical app that, in a modern high school, could make any dream come true, they decided to keep things super prosaic and uninspired. Forget about the plot holes for a second, let’s ignore the fact that when Kyle sings (or badly lipsyncs) with or without a microphone there seems to be no audible difference, let's ignore the shameless high school musical imitation that falls flatter than a pancake dropped from Burj Khalifa - what in God’s green earth is going on with Kyle and his motivations scene to scene?
I don’t know if it’s the hormones but as a 30 year old high school student (he really looks too old to be in high school) he should really know what he wants by now. Somehow this film manages to capture the essence of teenage disillusion very well - accidentally - and it's still trash.
To summarise, Status Update is a movie you've seen before but less fun because you've seen it before. The storyline is so worn out the app might as well be a genie that tells our hero to “be careful what you wish for”. That might have been better actually.
Status Update lazily takes us through the expected turns and twists with no discernible effort to be original and ends exactly the way you expect it to. There are no surprises here except that I didn't get out of my seat halfway in and leave. I wish I had the app to get the time I spent watching this back.
