Don't write Babyteeth off as another sick teen movie

First-time director Shannon Murphy revitalizes a stale genre

Eliza Scanlen.
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube, iStock)

Boy meets Girl. Girl has cancer. Like all movie cancers, it's terminal. Girl is busy working her way through a bucket list, which includes items like "lose virginity," "shoplift," and "go to Amsterdam." Girl tries to push Boy away by telling him: "if you leave now ... everything we had will be perfect forever." Boy stays anyway. They go to prom! Girl finally dies, but looks very beautiful while she's at it. Fall, fall, frail leaf in shadow! Boy gazes off into the sunset and thinks about how their love is like a wind as "Cry" by Mandy Moore plays in the background.

How many times have you seen this movie, or some variation of it? Odds are, a lot. Hollywood loves a good terminal romance movie, and especially one in which the person dying is a teenage girl (although sometimes it's a teenage boy who dies, just to shake things up). The genre is basically a foolproof formula for success, coming preloaded with "despair, alienation, suffering, seize-the-day recklessness, [and] inbuilt tragedy." You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll roll your eyes at the same recycled clichés (seriously, how does everyone seem to have the foresight to write a letter to be read in somber voice-over after they've died?).

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.