From Amazon Studios comes Chemical Hearts, a romantic coming of age story starring Lili Reinhart of Riverdale fame and Austin Abrams. Based on a book by Krystal Sutherland, is about Henry Page High school student who has never been in love. Henry is a clumsy  kid with a penchant for writing and falls for Grace, a broken teenager with terrible Secret.

Watching this film, I found myself really relating to how high school really was all the ups and downs and feelings we are throwing around as teenagers. It really feels like Krystal Sutherland went back to High School to write this book.

I have always loved films with narration by the main character. Narration helps set up what the writer is feeling and gives us more of a generalization of the characters motives. Grayson Henry meets in the lobby waiting for the school newspaper department head. Grace just wants to write but Henry wants to become the editor for the newspaper. Immediately you see that Grace has a chip on her shoulder and she has obviously been injured in some sort of way. The injury further intensifies the chip on the shoulder as they proceed to walk home Grace offers Henry a ride home. Matching intellects they discuss writing we find out that Grace actually knows her stuff. The connection is made between the two characters pretty soon after meeting. Grace gives Henry a book of love sonnets by Pablo Neruda for reference.

There is a quick introduction to Henry’s family and they seem like a solid family that gives Henry a lot of support. It’s pretty obvious Henry Falls for Grace immediately.  He looks her up on the internet so try and find more about her and finds a lot of happy photos that really don’t show the person in the light of which his first impression of Grace has given him.

The middle part of this movie revolves around the newspaper mostly with a lot of Henry’s friends and other characters playing their part. Cora and Muz are Henry’s main friends and they love him with the kind of unbreakable bond we develop in our teens. We also get the impression that Grace does not fit in; she even says later in the movie how she thinks she is weird. There is evidence of the quirkiness in the fact that she doesn’t want to drive her car and she only walks home from school. A lot of the connection between Henry and Grace happens with Grace with the car involved.

Bond between Grace and Henry starts to build up when Grace takes him to a special place that only she likes to go, an old plastic bottling factory. Grace slowly starts to let herself out to Henry a little bit of the time. The secret location Grace brings Henry to gives you a sense of the filming.  I like the locations they chose and I like the settings they chose. I think it helps with the overall cinematography of the film. I think this film is authentic in nature and doesn’t necessarily align itself with most coming of age cliche movies. However, I think that it does all start with the writing.

There are some really great moments in this film and touching moments as well. The scene  where Henry’s sister explains heartbreak to Henry and what heartbreak does to the body as she is a physician in training. When Henry follows her to the graveyard and finds out more information about what is really going on with Grace. There is a powerful scene when Henry finds Grace at the school trying to walk and Grace so frustrated walking she beats her leg with her crutch. Another touching scene has Henry explaining I’m about a suicide of a friend of his as it relates to a Hustler magazine.

The fact that this movie was filmed in more or less 25 days with a 35mm camera, it is done well. Writers are always trying to capture that “Dead Poets Society” feel with writing, but they always end up a cliche of that idea. The quote in the movie that “adults are just scared kids who were lucky enough to make it out of limbo alive” doesn’t really make sense since we are individuals and regardless of our past, you are not the same person at 17 that you are at 70. This rang false for me and felt just like fluff.

The ending of this film does not deliver the happy ending you are craving for and that’s unfortunate. And although the final scenes try to achieve closure, they really don’t deliver on it. Thinking back that does relate to the teenage years I experienced. There are parts of my life I didn’t understand and didn’t have closure with so a thumbs up for relating. So if your in the mood to reminisce about your past experiences Chemical Heart will take you there or it won’t