Chemical Hearts

Title: Chemical Hearts 

Movie Director: Richard Tanne  

Production Company: Amazon Studios  

Copyright: 2020 

Genre: Romance, Drama, teen  

Awards or Honors:None.  

Watching Level: Rated R  

Plot Summary: Chemical Hearts follows the story of a New Jersey teenager named Henry Page. He is shy, quiet, and likes to write and is the editor of the school newspaper. He meets Grace Town, who is quiet and is recovering from what looks like a severe injury. He likes her and begins hanging out with her, despite her somewhat cold demeanor. He finds out she was a passenger in a car accident and that the driver, her boyfriend, died. It becomes clear she is trying to process the grief and healthy move forward with her life. They kiss, and they begin dating. They go to a Halloween party and have a good time, but he discovers that although she likes him, she is still in love with her dead boyfriend, causing issues. They decide to break up. They avoid each other for the rest of their senior year. They eventually see each other at the end of the year and talk and forgive each other. They end up going their separate ways as they move on to adulthood.    

Movie Director Background: Richard Tanne is the director of Chemical Hearts. He grew up in New Jersey, and it is likely it influenced some of the movie’s events. Many of the film’s locations are in Northern New Jersey outside of New York City. He wrote and directed the movie Southside With You, which appeared at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie was about Barrack and Michelle Obama and became a critical and commercial success (Tanne, 2020).    

Critical Evaluation: The movie is based on the book Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland. The movie location takes place in the suburbs of New Jersey, and it provides a good background for a safe and uneventful life for the main character. The scenes are well shot, and there are a few scenes in the afternoon sunlight that give a lazy, dreamlike quality to the camera work. The plot is straightforward, and at times a watcher might want more development of some of the secondary characters. The cast is well known in the teenage entertainment world, with Lili Reinhart of Riverdale starting as one of the main characters. At times the plot moves too fast and does not give enough context for what might have happened in between. Perhaps the movie’s time constraints limited how much they could put in, as books are usually longer and more detailed than their movie counterparts. Although there aren’t as many songs as I thought there could be, the music score is decent. There is a lot of dialog without music, and the movie decides to repeat one song throughout the film to reinforce a plot point instead of adding other songs.  

Creative Use: I would want to have the movie be part of a library program book club where we read the book and watch the movie or television version. It would be a monthly program that gives teenagers the chance to read and watch the different versions. We could then compare the two and decide which one we liked better and the differences between them. Many books become movies, and having a library program that celebrates both would be fun, particularly if the series is popular with teenagers, and they are excited about them.    

Speed Talk: Henry is a high school senior who has had a nice, quiet life, but has not had a lot happen to him to challenge or test him. Until he meets the new student, Grace, the quiet girl from across town. They begin to know each other, he falls in love with her, and they begin a relationship. But tragedies from the past put their relationship to the test, and he experiences how hard life and love can be for people.    

Potential Challenges: There are no challenges as this is a just-released movie. Potential challenges might be for the same sex relationship between two secondary characters in the movie, as this is one of the more commonly challenged censorship issues.   

Reason for Inclusion: I included this movie because it is a recently released popular teenage movie. It is also on a platform in Amazon Prime Video that many teenagers are using and is becoming a big streaming platform on par with Netflix and Hulu. It also deals with teenage issues like high school, life in upcoming adulthood, grief, loss, trauma, love, and unsolvable issues that life throws at us. It is not necessarily a fun, happy movie, but I think it is more realistic about the issues teenagers deal with nowadays. Many movies glamorize teen life, but this movie shows how tough it can be growing up.   

Kandpal, Disha. (2020, August 25). Where Is Chemical Hearts Filmed? Here’s The Major Shooting Location Of The Film. Republic World. https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/hollywood-news/where-is-chemical-hearts-filmed-chemical-hearts-filming-locations.html  

Richard Tanne. (2020). Talkhouse. Retrieved October 7, 2020 from https://www.talkhouse.com/artist/richard-tanne/