When I first heard about “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” I was looking forward to it so much; I mean who doesn’t love Noah Centineo and a story where the bigger girl gets the boy? What a rare occurrence and something I so badly wanted to support. Unfortunately, it was not the magical story I was expecting, but rather disappointing and not the representation that I wanted in the media.
The movie started off fine, but quickly took a turn as soon as Veronica gave Jamey Sierra’s number and then Sierra started to catfish him. It made me sad that she felt so much shame about herself and her body that she couldn’t tell him who she was. She knew he liked her brain and her heart, and yet because of the society we live in, Sierra felt like he wouldn’t want her because she was not up to standard with what our society deems “beautiful”.
If you can get past that part and still don’t understand why I hated this movie, let us jump to the scene where Jamey kisses Veronica and Sierra gets so mad that she puts up private messages of Veronica onto the jumbo screen – at this point I was ready to just turn it off. I thought at least the one thing this movie had going for it was women supporting women, and then they messed that up too. Sierra didn’t even give Veronica a chance to explain, she just betrayed one of her only friends all over a stupid boy who, if we are being honest, probably won’t last because most high school relationships don’t…but friends do!
The most tragic part of this movie was the end, when Jamey finally finds out the truth, and is rightfully mad. Sierra wrote a beautiful song while wallowing, one of the only good things to come out of the movie, while everyone else is still sad or upset. Then all of a sudden, I swear it feels like I accidently fast-forwarded 20 minutes of the movie! We see Veronica at Jamey’s doorstep and then he appears out of nowhere talking to Sierra and we’re supposed to believe it’s “happily ever after.” That was not the ending this movie deserved; I wanted Sierra to go fix her mistakes herself. I wanted Jamey to forgive Sierra and tell Sierra how beautiful her heart and mind are instead of the stereotypical “you’re not everyone’s type, but you’re my type” speech.
This was not at all the movie I was expecting and so badly wanted; it didn’t give me the hope that looks and size don’t matter. If anything, it proved how shallow our society is and how desperately it needs to change.