There has been a lot of buzz about the movies being released in 2019. There are sequels, remakes and new movies. One of the new movies that was just released is a movie called Five Feet Apart, with beloved Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson.
The movie takes place in a hospital where the two main characters have a disease called cystic fibrosis (CF), which is when mucus builds up in your lungs, blocking your airway, and your lungs constantly get infected. Two patients with CF are not allowed to get within six feet of each other, or they run the risk of being exposed to more infection.
Richardson plays Stella, a teenage girl who was born with CF and has been in and out of the hospital her whole life. She has her best friend, named Poe, portrayed by Moises Arias, who also has CF and is in a room just down the hall from her. Poe has been Stella’s best friend since she they were three years old.
The movie starts with Stella hanging out with her two friends, picking out swimsuits for a party that the three of them were going to take before Stella got sick, then Stella’s favorite nurse, Nurse Barb, comes in and tells her she is allowed to go to the NICU (Newborn Intensive Care Unit), which is Stella’s favorite place in the hospital. On her way, she waves to Poe, and stops outside a door to another CF patient’s room. She watches as he talks to his friends while they try to make out on his bed. She gets to the NICU, and she says looking at the babies is her favorite thing. Will joins her and tries to get to know Stella, who doesn’t care to talk to him, when Barb walks in and gets mad at them for not being six feet apart. After they go back to their rooms, Will does some research on Stella, finds her YouTube page, and starts to watch her videos.
At this point in the movie, I didn’t have any problems with it. I felt a little bad for them, because their disease prevented them from coming within six feet of each other, and it stopped Stella from going to the party that she planned with her friends. Some people might have found it creepy when Will was watching all of Stella’s videos, but I didn’t. I found it kind of cute, because he wanted to get to know her.
Stella was in her room when she looked out the window and saw Will sitting on the edge of the roof. Stella races up to the roof, and asks him what he is doing. He says stuff along the lines of, “We are all dying anyway, what’s the point?” She gets very offended, because she doesn’t want to die and believes that she will survive. She storms down from the roof and goes back to her room. Shortly after, Will does the same.
I wasn’t very fond of this part because they were supposed to be six feet apart at all times, and, on the roof, they were no more than three feet apart, so they would have infected each other.
After that, she went to his room and demanded to see his regimen. He handed it to her (again, they were, like, four feet apart), and it was just used to draw on, so she demanded that they do their medication together and work out together, and he said, “Yeah, okay, but only if I can draw you.” She said no originally, but later said okay. Then they started to hang out together, (being four or five feet apart, not six), they FaceTimed and did all of their medicine together. They slowly started to fall for each other, and Stella decided to “take a foot back” from CF, because CF has taken so much from her, and said that they only have to be five feet apart instead of six.
This was a little strange, because they have a higher chance of being infected now, and they are falling in love, but they both have a bad disease which prevents them from being together.
Stella grabs a pool cue stick, and they both grab an end of that, and that keeps them about five feet apart. They end up sitting with their feet in the pool, and they were talking and getting really deep in their conversation when she started to use the pool stick to mimic her hand on her body. Then they both jumped in the pool in their underwear. Then Nurse Barb came back and they both raced to get back to their rooms.
This part made me feel really awkward, because she was feeling herself up with a pool stick. When they jumped in the pool, it also shouldn’t have been allowed, and they weren’t five feet apart, they were, like, two feet at most.
Then Stella found out that Will’s birthday was the next day, so she planned a secret birthday party and invited all of his friends and Poe. Poe cooked and made a bunch of food and a cake. They partied and celebrated until Nurse Barb came in and broke the party up.
This part was super cute because his friends had bailed on him, and so she called them and tried hard to convince them. She finally did, and it was super cute because Poe cooked for him.
The next morning, the nurses were getting a call from Poe’s room. They thought he sat on his button again, so they walked in his room and he was on the floor, unresponsive. They called a code blue (cardiopulmonary arrest) and tried over and over to revive him, but they were not successful. Poe passed away.
Stella went back to her room and started to tear it apart, and then went outside into the cold, grieving. Will came out to be with her. She said she wanted to “see the lights,” so she and Will took off towards the city. They come upon a frozen lake, and started to play on the ice by running and sliding on it.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, they have found new lungs for Stella, so they are trying to find her, calling her and texting her. Will reads the texts and tries to convince Stella to go back. She falls off of a bridge onto a layer of ice. When Will walks over there, she is gone and there is a hole where the ice was. Will pulls her out, she isn’t breathing, he sends a text to Nurse Barb telling her where they are, and tries to resuscitate Stella using mouth-to-mouth.
They got back to the hospital, she lived, they prepared her for lung surgery, he told them he gave her mouth-to-mouth, and they went through with the surgery. Stella survived the surgery, and, after she awoke, Will called her and said that he can’t be near her anymore, for her own good, and that he was transferring hospitals. The End.
These last scenes really bothered me, because, when he was doing CPR, he wasn’t pushing hard enough to get to her lungs; he had to break her ribs, but he didn’t. The mouth-to-mouth and the ending was very abrupt, it ended with Will walking away and her with eyes closed. Altogether, the movie wasn’t horrible, but it definitely could have been a lot better with all the spacing issues, and the ending and storyline could have been better. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my favorite.
