Boy Meets Girl, or: I’m More Liberal Than I Appear

Second week of Jillian and Christa’s Big Gay Blog Collab! This film is Christa’s pick, and you can check out her review here.

I feel I should apologize for this review in advance as I’m extremely distracted at the moment.

The Film:

Boy Meets Girl

Where to Watch:

Netflix (US)

The Premise:

Ricky, a trans woman living in a small town, navigates family, relationships, bigots, and the pursuit of fashion school.

The Uncondensed Version:

Our film follows Ricky, a young transgender woman living in small-town Kentucky. When the film begins, she and her bff Robby are discussing the merits of dating women even though she has been interested in men up to this point.

Conveniently, Francesca, a young woman from a well-to-do family in town, arrives at that very moment, and she hits it off with Ricky. Though Ricky feels Francesca wouldn’t be at all interested in her, the two run across each other again. Francesca is kind of annoyingly upbeat, but maybe she’s just supposed to be full of Southern charm? With encouragement from Robby, Ricky tells Francesca she’s trans. Francesca is surprisingly open-minded, though her fiancé, a marine currently in Afghanistan, is not.

See? Blogging brings people together!

A little more about Ricky: since her mother died, she is a surrogate mother to her little brother, who is quite adorable and plays with dolls. Their father is pretty damn sweet and supportive, but is busy running his auto shop. Ricky’s brother helps run her Youtube channel, a fashion blog, er, vlog? Ultimately, Ricky dreams of escaping to fashion school as small-town life isn’t really her thing.

Soooooooooooooooooooooooo things move along pretty quickly between Ricky and Francesca, which leads to an uncomfortable sex talk with Robby. Also a fairly in-depth discussion of gender and sexual orientation.

Things begin to fall apart a bit at a fancy party Francesca invites Ricky and Robby to attend.

Surprise, the marine fiancé shows up and is an asshole!  Classic lines from the party include: “She is a transgender girl, not a terrorist;” “You need to stop hanging out with that thing;” and “I’m more liberal than I appear” (the last one is probably my favorite quote from this film).

I just really like her punk lumberjack look in this shot.

After all of this drama, Ricky and Francesca end their relationship. The icing on the cake is a rejection letter from fashion school. And THEN Robby and Ricky have a huge fight, most of which they could easily get over except when he says Ricky isn’t a real girl. Damn.

I feel like I’m going to spoil the rest of the film if I tell you what happens next, so let’s jump to rating, ok?

The Rating:

 3/5 Pink Panther Heads

Eh, I don’t know. At times it felt a bit like one of those educational movies from school. Like the progressive, factually accurate version of one of those films.

Ricky is so cool, and Robby is pretty adorable, but I found Francesca irritating. So, so irritating, and she wouldn’t go away. Also the fake Southern accents. Sometimes they’re just really hard to listen to. I liked elements of this film, but I did find it a bit preachy.

I’m sorry, you guys. I don’t really have a coherent reason for this rating. I’ll do better when I’m not stressing out about interviews.

On an unrelated note, I really need to share with the world that I just got a spam friend request from B00bqueen2.

B00BQUEEN2.

B00BQUEEN2.

I’M SORRY I’M JUST REALLY FUCKING STRESSED.

See Christa’s post here!