Spoiler Alert (2022)

I know it's based on a real life story but Spoiler Alert often feels less original than most life stories and more like a jumble of other movie moments all pushed together. Watching Spoiler Alert get a film that we are familiar with and know exactly what to expect, hence the appropriate name? A lot of Spoiler Alert feels like what we've seen before, pulling scenes from rom-coms (the meet cute), from gay movies (the awkward coming out to parents scene), to every other cancer movie (the lying sick at the beach house moments). It hits all the right beats, but often it feels like those beats are being trotted out along some sort of formula. And when we reach the ending it feels like it was prescribed, the logical conclusion. Yet despite how rote it often feels the film manages to wring some pathos out of its story, enough to make it passable in the end. Perhaps it is the actual lived experience of the author played here by Jim Parsons. 

I struggled to find any chemistry between the leads. Both Parsons and Aldridge are good in their roles but together they don't make a convincing couple. But then again a lot of Spoiler Alert isn't overly convincing. For example, as I mentioned, the film make a comedic moment out of Aldridge coming out to his parents, yet the film never establishes any of the tension to make this feel honest. Never once does the film establish any resistance to their son's queerness in his parents nor any internalized homophobia in Kit to make his stumble over being his true self with them. Instead the film has a character actually verbalize "it's hard" in reference to coming out so the audience gets it but it never makes us feel it. We are just to assume it because we are told. Like we are to assume their falling in love earlier. The film again has a character explain to us "you're just his type" so it doesn't make us have to feel their falling for each other, something which doesn't really ever happen organically. 

The film is at its best when it upends some of these expectations. The couple actually does break up at one point (but even this is handled poorly since we just get to accept that they are going to be together and the film just announces them having broken up so again we don't really see it happen) BUT I did appreciate how the dynamics of their love continuing despite the separation makes for some of the most interesting aspects of the film. There is a moment near the end when Parsons makes space for his lover's other lover to come say goodbye that finally doesn't seem like something we've already seen in every other movie like this. And the cast is good; with what they are working with they do a great job. Aldridge especially is strong in not just making his sick person feel like parody. 

So while Spoiler Alert may not be the next great thing it's also not so bad. Perhaps it manages to hit some real emotions along the way. 

Spoiler Alert

Starring: Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Sally Field, Bill Irwin, Antoni Porowski, Nikki M. James

Director: Michael Showalter

Writers: David Marshall Grant, Dan Savage