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Let’s play a game: Scroll through new releases on Netflix and take a shot every time Noah Centineo appears in a teen rom-com as the “nice jock.”
As the man currently holding the coveted title of the Internet’s boyfriend, Centineo — with credits ranging from the tall, dark stranger that Camila Cabello dances with in her music video for “Havana” to the adorkable Peter Kavinsky from last summer’s hit film, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” — has likely appeared on your social media feed at least a few times. It’s not hard to see the appeal: Centineo’s face has launched a thousand heart emojis; his public persona is oddly reminiscent of a golden retriever; his #relatable tweets have sent legions of tweens swooning with their poetic eloquence (a personal favorite: “3 words. / Heated Toilet Seats”).
Recently, Centineo has been hard at work, racking up six film credits between 2017 and September 2019. In that short span of time, Centineo has been typecast so often as the teen heartthrob who falls for the oh-so-quirky outcast that he’s become his own genre of film. Let’s take a look at his list of films and determine exactly which ones are hot and which are Noah-t.
6. No, God! No, God Please No-ah!: “SPF-18”
Director Alex Israel really must’ve blown the entire budget on paying Keanu Reeves to come in for a two-second cameo, because besides Reeves’ appearance, there’s not a single draw to this film. “SPF-18” is visually amateurish and uninspired with its overuse of montages and reliance on a limited number of generic sets. Content-wise, it’s not much better, cooking up a stale plot stuffed to the brim with every teen movie trope. The premise of “SPF-18” revolves around Penny Cooper (Carson Meyer), your average girl-next-door living in L.A. who must choose between dating Johnny Sanders Jr. (Noah Centineo), the complicated, dreamboat surfer with a tragic backstory, and Ash Baker (Jackson White), the mysterious country singer who just rolled into town.
“SPF-18” is much like cotton candy: It lacks substance, is sickly sweet, and the young ‘uns love it. The tired old love-triangle-predicament is meant to make up the entirety of both the plot and Penny’s personality as she wanders around beaches and mansions with her gang of friends — hopping from one unrelated activity to another as if working through a vacation bucket list. Only about 30 percent of “SPF-18” is even about setting up a story, and the rest is intended to be emotional climax after climax with plenty of yelling, crying, and philosophical talks by the ocean. However, the point of a climax is that it’s the satisfying payoff of built-up tension — when there’s never any tension to begin with, the film simply turns into self-important, dramatic drivel.
5. Noah Can’tActineo: “Swiped”
Dagnabbit, all this new-fangled technology has corrupted the youth! What happened to talking face-to-face and no sex before marriage and sexist gender roles in relationships? The film “Swiped” exudes this energy, so if you’re not into that, spare yourself the headache and swipe left.
On a more serious note, “Swiped” truly is a badly-executed social satire on both online dating and the increased popularity of hook-up culture often associated with it, and it desperately rallies for a return to the golden days of ol’ fashioned, Nicholas Sparks-esque romance. Noah Centineo plays Lance Black, a womanizer who enlists the help of his geeky college roommate, James Singer (Kendall Ryan Sanders) to create a casual hook-up app called Jungle. As more and more people hop on the trend of digitally finding their next bed partner, James-the-resident-computer-genius realizes that it’s up to him to deactivate Jungle as well as all other dating apps on the market to make men rediscover their appreciation for meaningful romantic connections.
“Swiped” brands itself as a comedy film, but much of the intended humor falls flat because although the characters, events, and even the very premise of the plot all obviously rely on campy stereotypes, the script takes itself too seriously, creating an uncomfortable dissonance. At its heart, “Swiped” is really a patronizing parable of the sins of technology that distills relationships into sexist stereotypes in which all men are hormonal heathens with no regard for emotional intimacy and all women are portrayed as clingy creatures in desperate need of long-term romance.
4. Just Saw Noah, I Need a Corona: “Sierra Burgess is a Loser”
Repeat after me: The existence of personal insecurities does not automatically redeem a character and excuse their wrongs against other people. “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” really loses sight of that basic principle as it progresses, following Sierra Burgess (Shannon Purser), a shy band geek who catfishes Jamey, the handsome football hero from another high school.
“Sierra Burgess is a Loser” quickly spirals into disturbing territory when Sierra befriends Veronica (Kristine Froseth), a beautiful, popular cheerleader, and enlists her help to continue catfishing Jamey at an even more extreme level — for example, Veronica and Jamey would go on dates while Sierra follows close behind, sending cues to Veronica about what to say or do. The film’s framing of scenes like the one where Jamey thinks he’s about to kiss Veronica but Sierra swaps in while his eyes are closed is utterly absurd — from the close shot of their faces together to the grand, orchestral music that crescendos when their lips touch, it all romanticizes an act of sexual assault. What makes it worse is that even when Sierra is exposed as a catfish by the end of the film, Jamey inexplicably forgives her and they get their happily ever after.
The dubious morals promoted by “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” bars it from a higher ranking in this list. It really is a shame, because with just a few tweaks to the plot and especially the ending, this film could’ve brilliantly subverted teen tropes by revealing the shy protagonist as the true mean girl rather than the pretty popular chick that everyone suspects. Or, the director could have just put the “Psycho” backtrack over a couple scenes and marketed the film as horror.
3. Noah Causes Me Woe-ah: “Turkles”
You, a rationally-minded human being, might ask, “What is a turkle? Is it possibly the offspring of the mating between a turkey and a turtle, just as a liger is the young produced by a lion and a tiger?” No, dear reader, “turkle” is simply a dialectal pronunciation of “turtle,” according to Wiktionary — if only the scriptwriters for this film had your creativity! Before you turn away in disappointment, take heart from this bit of comedy gold: “Turkles” is about a ragtag group of kids attending an environmental protection program called Camp Loggerhead, where they learn fun facts about sea turtles’ natural habitats, food preferences, and mating habits by day and hunt down turtle-egg poachers by night. It’s worth noting that Noah Centineo was only about 15 when he starred as one of the meddling kids in this movie, and it sure says a lot that “Turkles” still ranks as one of the top films in his portfolio of work.
Do the camerawork and transitions between scenes in “Turkles” make it look like a YouTube skit? Yup. Does half the dialogue seem to have been copy-pasted from the encyclopedia entry under “sea turtle”? Definitely. Pitted against almost any other selection of films, “Turkles” would not garner much praise, but since we’re operating within the context of Noah Centineo films, a kiddie adventure movie with a clear eco-activist agenda is a refreshing break from sappy rom-com after rom-com.
2. Noah Think I’ll Pass: “The Perfect Date”
In “The Perfect Date,” Noah Centineo plays Brooks Rattigan, a high schooler who dreams of attending Yale. In an effort to earn money for college tuition, Brooks enlists the help of his geeky friend, Murph (Odiseas Georgiadis) to create an app where people can hire Brooks as a fake-date for any given event. Brooks ends up posing as a prom date for Celia Lieberman (Laura Marano), who’s just so unique and unlike other girls that no guy from her school could handle asking her out. Plot twist: Brooks ends up actually falling for Celia and gives up on the business of being an escort. No one saw that coming.
Look at the plot summary of “Swiped.” Now look back at the plot summary of “The Perfect Date.” If you pick up a magnifying glass, you may be able to discern some minute differences between these two movies, which were released on Netflix less than one year apart. So why does “The Perfect Date” rank above “Swiped” if they’re essentially the same film? For one thing, the production budget was marginally higher. For another, Brooks seemed to actually have aspirations for success outside of getting with his love interest, but even that’s debatable by the end of the film since he abandons his dreams of Yale and instead writes a love letter styled after a college application, inquiring to be accepted to “the University of Celia Lieberman.” Yeah, Brooks, go get that education! Oh, wait…
1. Noah-t That Bad: “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the single movie on Centineo’s résumé that you wouldn’t have to pay someone to watch is the one where another actor (ahem, Lana Condor) carries the movie. “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” follows Lara Jean Covey (Condor), a high school wallflower who winds up fake-dating Peter Kavinsky (Centineo) in order to avoid an awkward confrontation with Josh Sanderson (Israel Broussard), her childhood friend, her older sister’s recently-ex-boyfriend, and a recipient of one of Lara Jean’s secret love letters that got leaked. She promises that she won’t actually fall in love with Peter, but you know better than to trust a line like that in a rom-com.
Despite the overused fake-dating premise, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” sets itself apart from the rest of the films on this list because rather than lazily relying on tropes to carry the story, it cleverly plays with dramatic irony to make the audience curious to see just how the classic romance tropes play out even if they know the inevitable ending. Moreover, the side characters actually have an effect on the plot, so their interactions with Lara Jean and Peter reveal new facets of the protagonists’ identities other than their infatuation with each other. All in all, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” is a sweet, lighthearted film that’s worth a few hours of your weekend. If you’re hoping to keep your positive opinion of Noah Centineo as an actor, you’re advised to watch just this one film and leave it at that.
—Staff writer Miranda Eng can be reached at miranda.eng@thecrimson.com.
