{"id":34422,"date":"2021-01-19T20:24:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T01:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=34422"},"modified":"2021-01-19T20:24:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T01:24:14","slug":"my-summer-as-a-goth-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/19\/my-summer-as-a-goth-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"My Summer as a Goth (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Tara Johnson-Medinger\u2019s \u201cMy Summer as a Goth\u201d is a lot like \u201cEdge of Seventeen\u201d but with so much less insight and charm than its predecessor. That\u2019s not to say that \u201cMy Summer as a Goth\u201d is terrible, but it\u2019s a mostly unpleasant and surface level teen coming of age film that doesn\u2019t re-invent the wheel. It definitely doesn\u2019t seem to want to re-invent the wheel, spending a lot of its time trying to work in the inexplicable, often clumsy plot elements in to the narrative.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After the sudden death of her father, 16-year-old Joey Javitts is sent to stay with her eccentric grandparents for the summer while her author mother tours the country to promote her latest novel. Struggling to find a new crowd, Joey promptly falls for the beguiling Goth boy next door, Victor, and is transformed by him and his friends, all of whom have an obsession with death, black, and heavy make up. If \u201cMy Summer as a Goth\u201d has anything worth checking out, it\u2019s mainly the performance by Natalie Shershow, whose portrayal of the character Joey carries the film.<\/p>\n

Most of the movie basically drags itself to the finish line, setting up so many weird and pointless sub-plots and asides. Johnson-Medinger has a tough time justifying so much of what unfolds that the movie is just tedious and unpleasant to sit through. The crux of the narrative, which involves Joey dealing with the death of her father, is completely lost in the weird Goth central plot which ultimately goes absolutely nowhere. We\u2019re never quite sure why Joey wants to be Goth, or what she\u2019s hoping to accomplish by adopting the lifestyle. There\u2019s not even much justification for her attraction and subservience to character Victor who, most of the time, looks like an Anne Rice cosplayer.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just not much complexity behind Joey and Victor\u2019s relationship and I was never too interested to see where it was all going. Why is Joey attracted to this counter culture, again? The big flip of characters in the final half also felt awkward and forced as a means of just getting us to the end of the narrative. All things considered Tara Johnson-Medinger\u2019s direction is solid, and there are strong performances by Shershow, and Eduardo Reyes, respectively. I wish \u201cMy Summer as a Goth\u201d had so much more substance to it, even if it does at least aim for a new take on the teen summer dramedy.<\/p>\n

Now on Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, FandangoNOW, Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, Charter, iTunes, Kaleidescape, Microsoft Store, Vudu <\/strong>and YouTube Rentals.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tara Johnson-Medinger\u2019s \u201cMy Summer as a Goth\u201d is a lot like \u201cEdge of Seventeen\u201d but with so much less insight and charm than its predecessor. That\u2019s not to say that \u201cMy Summer as a Goth\u201d is terrible, but it\u2019s a mostly unpleasant and surface level teen coming of age film that doesn\u2019t re-invent the wheel. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[219,225,302,420,501,2123,874,1033],"class_list":["post-34422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-coming-of-age","tag-drama","tag-gothic","tag-indie-film","tag-lgbtq","tag-romance","tag-teen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34424,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34422\/revisions\/34424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}