It’s honestly kind of a rite of passage as a college girl to have a dorm anecdote that you can tell around the campfire as a scary story; a rite of passage that very few movies I’ve ever seen capitalize on, which is what made Netflix’s newest Sadie Sandler special comedy so fresh.
Roommates had its official streaming release on April 15. However, I attended an advanced screening at FSU a couple of days before, and I was actually pleasantly surprised by the number of roommate pairs in the audience with me.
If you’re familiar with Sandler’s admittedly short filmography, you may have noticed that she appears to be collecting the essential girlhood experiences like fridge magnets.
We’ve seen her grow up in her dad’s, Adam Sandler, staples, experiencing a traumatic middle/high school friendship in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, and now she’s off to her freshman year of college.
While my freshman dorm experience had its ups and downs, absolutely nothing could’ve prepared me for the straight-up depravity that graced the screen for two hours.
The plot follows Sandler’s character Devon as she desperately tries to make college friends after an uneventful high school experience. Immediately, the first friend she makes at orientation is who she wants as her roommate, which I’m sure any student can attest is a very, very bad plan.
That turns out to be the case as her initial friendship with Celeste, played by Chloe East, sours, and the girls escalate from passive aggression, to quiet sabotage, to actual felonies…
What’s more girlhood than that!
Celeste’s actions towards Devon seem harmless at first, but then gradually start to become offenses that I would literally hold a grudge about for my entire life. For example, if you ever walked in on your roommate destroying the room, what happens in this movie is so much worse.
Some of the movie’s primary conflicts center on the teaching assistant Devon is unfortunately very much in love with. Near the end of the movie, it’s actually revealed that he’s been pathetically crushing on Celeste, and Devon kind of loses it.
The good news is, Roommates is joining Legally Blonde in the ranks of college movies that don’t redeem the male love interest. This, I think, is warranted because it’s actually circled and written in bold in every university employee training to not fraternize with students.
This film doesn’t struggle with pacing at all, and the humor is actually pretty modern. Sandler gets better at acting every time I accidentally end up watching a movie with her in it, and she does take the brunt of the emotional scenes in this one.
I thought the film’s format was also very interesting. It’s being told as a story to a pair of roommates, warning them to work it out or suffer the same fate as Devon and Celeste.
The narrator for the entire movie is Sarah Sherman, who was also the main characters’ resident assistant (RA) when everything went down. Sherman’s character fits in really well with the supporting cast’s comedy, and the integration of the flashbacks is nearly seamless.
The college stereotypes that I typically don’t like seeing in movies also worked well with the plot. Sherman plays an aloof RA; East plays the evil, spoiled rich roommate; and Sandler herself is the fish-out-of-water freshman.
Unfortunately, it’s painfully obvious that whoever wrote this script hasn’t been to college recently or had any kind of female friendship, so the movie feels like a long con for Sadie Sandler to meet Megan Thee Stallion.
The setting of the movie also felt kind of awkward to me. It takes place at a small university, which makes the drama of the events a little stilted. If someone from a big southern school told me a roommate story like this, I would absolutely believe it, but the college campus this movie takes place on looks like it has exactly one lecture hall.
Roommates has had a relatively decent reception from critics, and the streaming release kept it from getting any traction in theaters. In my opinion, this film is neither bad nor entirely good, but I think it does a good job of modernizing the college movie trope.
This movie probably isn’t going to be up for any awards, but I think it’s a great addition to an arguably small genre of movies about the freshman girl experience!
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