'Before I Fall': Stop trying to make Deutch happen

Though the actresses are separated by fewer years than "Big Brother" has been on the air, the resemblance between Rachel McAdams ("Spotlight") and Halston Sage ("Neighbors") is so striking that there should be a countdown clock until they play mother and daughter. The former is now 38; the latter is 23. If the casting doesn’t happen in the next three years, I’ll be shocked.

Until then, we have Sage playing McAdams’ “Mean Girls” role in “Before I Fall,” an embarrassing contribution to the subgenre of movies advocating for high school queen bees not to be judgmental assfaces. Like McAdams' Regina, Sage's Lindsay struts strongest and barks loudest among the hallway’s elite, talking behind her friends’ backs while making everyone else long for just one kind word from her. That’s not an issue for her best friend Sam (Zoey Deutch of “Why Him?” “Everybody Wants Some!!” and “Dirty Grandpa”), a former outsider and the movie's equivalent of Lindsay Lohan's Cady. Well, not at first: Sam joins Lindsay in calling a shy, artistic classmate with less than ideal hair “psycho” and plans to lose her virginity to a dude whose douchiness is subtly and intelligently conveyed through a backwards hat, nose ring and tendency to sit with his foot on tables.

Perhaps a near-death experience on the way home from a party would inspire a reasonable drama about these teenagers (and the other two members of Lindsay’s bitch squad rhombus) reexamining their conduct after realizing they’re not as untouchable as they thought. Except “Before I Fall” isn’t about a very, very predictable car crash and its aftermath; for some reason, the incident results in Sam reliving that day, February 12, over and over again, in a story about as wise as a studio that makes a movie set on Valentine’s Day weekend that bites from “Groundhog Day” and then releases it in March.

Of course the alternative to Sam’s awful boyfriend is a nice guy (Logan Miller) who sends her a note saying “I see you” based on nothing, a “This isn’t you” note that seems more condescending than supportive and operates largely because of one thing that happened between them 10 years ago. Of course the movie opens with Sam saying “Maybe for you there’s a tomorrow. Maybe for you there’s 1,000 or 3,000 or 10. So much time you can bathe in it. So much time you can waste it. But for me there’s only today,” because the best lessons are delivered through sanctimony and voiceover. And of course it takes Sam like four seconds on her second run-through of the day to ask her friends, “What do you think people will say about you when you die?” Adapted from Lauren Oliver’s novel of the same name, this dreck would be more appropriately titled “Insta-Conscience.”

Especially because the message is that everyone who isn’t a doofus boyfriend is only one high-minded lecture away from major behavioral change. It treats the butterfly effect like a new, mind-blowing concept and leans into martyrdom after spending most of its time suggesting there’s no need for tragedy whatsoever. Almost none of the friendships or forgiveness among them happen for any identified reason, and Deutch, in her first starring role since the excruciating “Vampire Academy,” is even blander than the movie. There’s so little in her eyes you can practically see her remembering the lines. 

Though not as nauseating as the likewise death-focused YA adaptation “If I Stay,” “Before I Fall” resorts to lazy ideas whenever possible, including a grumbly lesbian who spouts “I’m in hetero-normative hell” and the English lesson of the endlessly repeated day focusing on Sisyphus, the dude doomed to spend eternity rolling a boulder up hill. “Boy Meets World” cornered the market on class subjects mirroring the plot. Nothing left to gain there.

At least the soundtrack (Grimes, Shamir, Aurora) seems clued in to some one-named stars of today’s youngsters. Otherwise the script from Maria Maggenti (whose last big-screen credit was helping out with the benign Selena Gomez vehicle “Monte Carlo”) feels as clunky as Sisyphus' giant rock, with oh-so-conversational lines like “Lindsay doesn’t do cute; it’s not in her lexicon,” “The more roses you get, the more popular you are, right?” and “At least we did it right: kissed the hottest boys, went to the sickest parties.” Meanwhile, many characters treat “Cupid Day” like a national holiday and Lindsay and company fail to come up with better burns than “Sociopath, twelve-o-clock.” Also: Wouldn’t bullied Juliet (Elena Kampouris) prepare more than “You’re a bitch” and “You’re pathetic” when telling off the people she hates the most?

However 17-year-olds express disgust these days, insert that word/facial expression/emoji here.

D

Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)