The Day We Lit Up the Sky (2021)

Okay but still Fun

A 'coming of age' movie about underdogs/misfits that didn't quite hit the spot for me. I like to indulge in youth-centered movies and dramas often because I feel like I know what to expect out of them. Not saying that this mold can't be broken, as there are various kinds of youth movies. However, this movie tried to evoke the same feelings as other shows but it couldn't really do the same. I wanted to like this one so much. I enjoyed the musical aspect of singing and dancing. The quirkiness of the characters and their interactions. Some of the cinematography was really nice for the moving dance scenes and drone shots - even the CGI looked good when it was incorporated. I actually liked the coloring in here as it was bright and fun. All of that was captivating but I didn't quite like the storytelling that was done in here.

The movie focuses on a girl who doesn't fit the mold to be a dancer on her high school dance team. She's not tall enough, not fair skin enough, and is even bullied by the dance teacher. Xiao Huang is resilient, always has a smile on her face, always being herself, but has an emotional flaw due to the lack of maternal love. She meets five men and coaches them to form their own team to join the dance competition. All of their reasons to participate were different given their own background but they had one thing in common of being the underdogs/misfits. So all of that sounds great so far and it started out great until we started to hit the themes of the movie.

The dance sequences and break-out into singing scenes were all fun. I'm not an expert in musicals nor have I seen many musicals, unless you count Disney. Despite all of that, I enjoyed it but some aspects of it don't make sense to me. I felt like the messages and themes were quite lost in the storytelling. With so many themes that should've evoked natural emotions in us, felt too contrived with what we received. Is it due to this being Xu En Yi's first acting role, the editing, or storytelling? I'd say a bit of it all. This is a movie that focuses on dancing yet I couldn't really feel the passion for dancing, despite what each of the main characters' reasons were to dance, I couldn't feel that burn to want that stage or to win. They oddly added the element of coming of age as the main theme in the end when it was not a focus of the movie apart from that they're seniors. The one thing where I felt like it was done quite decent was the theme of single-parent love and the lengths one would go to do well as one.

There were moments where I felt like it was too choppy when it came to the sequence of events, which I can easily overlook. Another thing I can overlook is how our main lead obviously does not look like someone who can be a high schooler/18-20. I can also forgive that his dancing does not look convincing because instead of seeing Old Dog as an expert in dancing, I just saw him as someone who wanted to learn how to dance. So his moves, though felt awkward, didn't deter from the story. My biggest dislike of the movie was how she was bullied and how it all got brushed resolved between the two groups without a good conclusion but through one dance scene. Also, this was one of the biggest conflicts of the show and a reason as to why she is where she's at and who she is. I just find it hard to accept as they're brushing it aside so easily when it's an actual societal issue and doesn't add any logic/depth to the movie to fix it with a mere dance.

You might enjoy it if you LIKE - musicals and underdog/misfits movies
You might want to SKIP if you're looking for - some sweet youth romance

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All over the place!

The whole time I was asking myself: "What am I watching?" and then "Why am I still watching it"? But I don't like dropping stuff, I mean, it's only a movie. It will end up making sense at some point, right? Ehm, no. It didn't. The script, the direction, the editing, is all over the place. Scenes follow one another without rhyme or reason jumping randomly and abruptly like a monkey on drugs. The characters do things completely opposite to what their character has been so far without any reason given for their change of mind, important conversations start happening and then... nothing has changed, nothing gets explained, no real development of that storyline, everything left hanging. The two main leads are very sweet and can actually act a little, the other are stock caricatures (the fat friend, the gay friend, the cocky friend, the mean girl, the bullies, the insensitive teacher and so on...) The music and dances are all exactly the same style, you cannot distinguish them from one another. Big words are spoken, cheap wisdom is served on a platter. And the ending? What about the competition? What about the relationship of the outcast with her suddenly changed classmates? What about the love story? Who knows what happened? Not me, although I did watch it till the bitter end (I deeply regret wasting almost two hours on my life on it) What a noisy yawn fest!

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