The sun is also a star is a contemporary romance based of the 2016 novel of the same name by Nicola Yoon. Following Natasha as she tries to stop her family being deported and Daniel on the day of his college interview when their lives collide on the New York city streets. They start an experiment too see if they can fall in love in one day.
It’s a sweet and easy to watch romance with a simple story line as two strangers try to fall in love in one day. Natasha (played by Yara Shahidi) and Daniel (played by Charles Melton) were both played well and created a believable relationship between the two. But for me the characters weren’t as in depth and were made very 2 dimensional and shallow because of the amount taken out from the book which had made relationships and motives real such as the story line between Natasha and her father being completely erased from the film.
I liked Daniels brother, Charles (played by Jake Choi) a lot more in the film as we got to see a whole new side to him after Daniel stood up to his father about college which hadn’t been explored in the book. Which to some extent I would have preferred to have gone without as I believe the intention was to not like his character.
The book was already a fully fleshed out and not far of a perfect story of fate and love which could have made a extremely good film if only they stuck to the book instead of adding things that had no impact on the narrative and taking out things that made the story what it was.
Themes of fate and a sort of ‘magic’ were almost ignored as characters such as the security guard were excluded which made it so everyone’s lives weren’t as woven together. They tried to add it back in the last 10 minutes when he ended up with his doctor after the accident but this just further destroyed the amazing parts of the book which I believe can’t be forgiven as it was such a pivotal part of the story.
The cinematography and editing were childish as the film was held together by a series of, not so well filmed, montages showing ‘sweet’ shots of their relationship instead of actually giving depth to their relationship or even showing them having actual conversations. There was even a recap montage at the end to go over all the other montages of the relationship we had been watching for the last hour. It’s safe to say that was the last straw for me and basically all hope for the film was gone.
There was also wired shots of random things during the actual conversations which pulled you away from the action as we looked at seemingly random shots of people on the streets, buildings and inanimate objects instead of concentrating on Natasha and Daniel. I can understand the reasoning behind this, to show her ties to New York, but it was done to the point of being super frustrating.
It would be difficult to say this film wasn’t aesthetically pleasing with the shots of the stars in the planetarium and the ceiling of central station which were almost awe inspiring and added a whole new visual depth. I appreciated the mini history lessons and extra information they utilised from the book and thought they did it in a really great visual way that I could have imagined as the intention of the author.
The shots of the city were also beautifully done. I especially admire the stark difference presented between shots of office buildings which were clinical and daunting shot in low angles vs shots of the culture/ smaller burrows which were vibrant and shot in neutral angles to show the comfort of a familiar place. As we viewed New York through the eyes of a poet and someone seeing the beauty for the last time.
I have no idea why they didn’t stick to the original ending and can’t say that I enjoyed the changes they made. The whole way through I was picking out lots of major differences and hoped that after all that they would keep the ending the same to bring it round but they didn’t. With the changes they made it felt as though they just stuck the ending on as an extra just so the audience could have a happy ending making it feel cheap which wasn’t how it was presented in the book.
If you haven’t read the book you’ll probably have a different experience, even though there was still technical flaws, but I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it because I was sat thinking about everything they’d changed or missed out. Because of this I just couldn’t rate this film highly at all.