Tagline:
When life keeps you apart, fight for every inch.

Wide Release Date:
March 15, 2019

Directed by:
Justin Baldoni
Written by:
Mikki Daughtry, Tobias Iaconis
Produced by:
Cathy Schulman, Justin Baldoni, Christopher H. Warner

Starring:
Haley Lu Richardson
Cole Sprouse
Moisés Arias
Kimberly Hébert Gregory
Parminder Nagra
Claire Forlani

PREGAME THOUGHTS

As you can tell by now, I like to watch movies about females leads with physical or mental issues. What can I say, my white male ass finds it relatable and empathetic. Perhaps I should’ve been born with a vagina. I hear you can get surgery for that now, but I don’t wanna do that for about 900 million reasons. So I’ll just watch these kinds of movies instead and call it good.

Gender is a social construct. Don’t forget that, my cis male friends. Watch your rom coms with pride.

THE 800(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic condition wherein your organs are prone to failure and your body is prone to infections, which are in turn very hard to fight. Two people with cystic fibrosis should not be closer to each other than six feet, since their immunocompromised bodies contain way more nasty organisms than a healthy individual, and therefore cross-contamination is an even more serious risk. So, certainly, we have a love story that takes place at a hospital where two kids fall in love and can’t touch each other without risking death.

Patient #1 is Stella Grant (Haley Lu Richardson). Her sister, Abby, was an adventurous daredevil who had decided to live twice as hard to help make up for Stella’s inability to do so herself. Abby broke her neck during a stunt gone awry one year ago. Stricken with grief and guilt, Stella spends a lot of her time and energy meticulously scheduling her medications, performing her exercises, eating correctly, and cooperating with all her procedures. Her parents already lost one daughter, she would hate for them to lose the other. She operates a very popular YouTube channel as an awareness campaign of the daily life of a CF teenager.

Check back again after 10pm. Gotta be over 18 years old. I’m gonnna… take the tube off…

Patient #2 is Will Newman (Cole Sprouse, who is either Zack or Cody but you can decide that one for yourself). He’s kind of a jerk and isn’t taking his condition too seriously, and this pisses Stella off. Will contracts a virus that renders him ineligible for a lung transplant, but Stella is totally eligible for a lung transplant because she totally didn’t contract a virus. After finding him annoying for about 15 movie minutes, she gets involved in helping him maintain his regimen. He begrudgingly accepts under the condition that he’ll get to draw her at some point. Like Titanic without the titties. Dealing with Will starts off difficult, but he eventually lightens up. Probably because he’s watching a lot of her YouTube videos and falling in love with her! Surprise! But they can’t come within six feet of one another.

Once Will learns that Abby died last year and Stella will be alone during her feeding tube replacement surgery, he tries to be as present as possible. The wind is taken out of his sails when Barb, a nurse, (Kimberly Hébert Gregory) confronts him about the dangers of CF relationships. Years ago, she allowed some slack on the six-foot rule with a CF couple and they died. She won’t let it happen again on her watch! So shove off, kid from Big Daddy with Adam “I Kind of Suck” Sandler.

They respect the six-foot rule while doing relationship stuff that doesn’t involve kissing or hugging or fucking, which hits hard once in a while as they keep spending so much time together. Taking Barb’s advice to heart, Will decides that he loves Stella too much to risk endangering her further with each other’s company. Stella loses her mind about this. Lots of crying fits. Lots of sadness. EVENTUALLY, though, he can’t stand it anymore and they agree to meet up again. Stella comes with an idea.

Their next date involves a five-foot pool cue. In an act of defiance and taking power over the CF that has taken so much away from them, it is agreed to take back one foot. They both hold ends of the pool cue while moseying around the hospital and its grounds. The most intimate moment of the movie happens at the pool, where they abandon insecurities, strip down to their underwear and reveal each other’s various wounds and surgery scars.

I’ll show you my emaciated body if you show me your emaciated body.

TRAGEDY STRIKES when Stella’s best hospital friend Poe (Moisés Arias) dies of CF complications. Too much death. Too many people that Stella cares about are dying. Stella loses her mind again. Lots of crying fits. Lots of sadness. EVENTUALLY, though, in another act of defiance, she decides to run away from the hospital in the freezing cold and try to visit the city, and all its lights, that she can see from the hospital room two miles away. Will comes along hesitantly.

This is getting long! Sorry! Stella gets calls that her lung transplant is ready, but she ignores them as she continues on. Stella and Will play on a frozen pond, but she falls through the ice and almost dies. Now here’s the emotional climax of the movie: after a minute’s equivocation, he decides to risk their lives and perform CPR. It works.

Luckily, they both get back to the hospital alive. Stella didn’t contract Will’s virus, Will survives, and Stella’s lung transplant is a success. Will’s treatments for his virus do not work, and fearing that any further contact would definitely be a problem, Will says a final goodbye and gifts Stella with a sketchbook of his drawings.

Girl, you need to transfer to a hospital where the doctors don’t breathe fire.

Oh yeah, somewhere in the middle of the movie Stella allows Will to sketch her as agreed upon. I forgot to mention that. I’ll stop writing this now. These keep getting longer and longer.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Cystic Fibrosis

Five Feet Apart taught me what this is! It’s a genetic condition, you’re born with it, you spend your whole life not knowing anything but the disease, you live every day as if you might get an infection and suddenly die, you cough up a lot of mucus, and you can’t come in close contact with anyone who also has it. This is precisely why you don’t fall in love with someone with CF if you also have CF! This is a no-brainer, and these kids fucked up royally.

Topic over.

TOPIC 2 — Yes, This Is a Romantic Drama

Because I’m unabashedly a woman with woman feelings and woman thoughts and woman sensibilities (and none of that actually exists, let’s be clear here), I found this stupid teen movie immensely enjoyable and emotional. A roller coaster of emotion! Ups and downs and ups and lefts and rights and downs and downs and downs and oh god I’m falling.

The snow angel contest has a clear winner.

There’s so much that was done right that it makes up for the immense pile of shit that was done wrong. I found the plot device that the two chronically sick teenagers literally can’t touch each other for VERY realistic reasons that are actually compelling. Like, usually there’s long distance or there’s some dumbass supernatural shit, but this is something real that can, and probably does, actually happen. The way they occasionally make it so crushing and sad was visceral. They can’t touch each other. They’re in the same room having a conversation, falling in love as they spend each day together stuck in the hospital, and they can’t kiss or hug or touch or anything. You can sense the frustration and the fear, choosing to avoid risking it in favor of, you know, keeping them both alive.

And that makes the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation all the more vital. It’s the only time they do the very dangerous saliva contact thing and Stella wasn’t even conscious to know it was happening. And Will took the risk even though he knew it might kill him. That’s love, baby.

TOPIC 3 — COVID-19

I’m surprised I didn’t hear about this movie more after the stupid pandemic harshed everyone’s buzz pretty much exactly a year later. The idea of keeping six feet apart became such an omnipresent part of everyone’s lives that I would’ve thought that a movie that covers this exact theme would’ve been just as discussed as Contagion was.

During the early months of that pandemic, when no one knew how much it could really fuck you up — like melt your eyeballs or turn your penis into jelly — I suppose we all knew what it was like to keep such a distance from the ones we loved. Not me, though. I got to involuntarily lockdown, which is all I ever wanted in my life! Except I had to go into work every day anyway, which blew chunks. Unfortunately, I can’t look through microscopes at home, now can I?

Isn’t it romantic watching all the preemies in the NICU? Really is something special…

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

Claire Wineland worked closely with the leads to perfect the roles of cystic fibrosis patients. Claire died of a stroke in September 2018, right after a successful lung transplant.
What’s to know? Cough cough, laugh, cough, fall in love, be sad, be angry, cough cough, be sad.

The balloons Stella uses for Will’s birthday are purple. Purple is the official color of CF patients.
Is this like how AT&T and Capital One are the official sponsors of the NCAA?

Only a year after the movie’s release, the “six foot rule” would become a universal guideline, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and would be commonly referred to as ‘social distancing’.
I don’t think a single person saw this movie after the pandemic started and didn’t think of that immediately. I sure did! Grrrrr, don’t get me started again on that “Dr.” Fauci!

The director Justin Baldoni guest starred in The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody season 3 episode 17 Foiled Again as Diego the fencing instructor. The Suite Life Of Zack And Cody starred Cole Sprouse as Cody Martin.
Oh God, yes, that’s the stuff. There’s nothing that gets me all hot and bothered quite like some Zack and Cody overlap! Right into my veins, as the kids say.

When Stella and Poe are eating donuts in the atrium they are wearing gloves but touching the donuts. The reason you wear gloves is so that the germs from the outside world do not get in your system.
Congratulations, IMDb trivia contributor! I, too, watched the movie.

A toast to being young, fucked up, and in the hospital!

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Sure, I think so. If nothing else, both Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse (ESPECIALLY Richardson) did a phenomenal job with their respective roles. Not once did any of their wide range of emotions feel forced or inadequate, and I didn’t expect that from Mr. Suite Life with Zack and/or Cody. Whichever one he is, I don’t fucking know. I’m an adult.

It does get pretty sappy a couple of times, though. If you think you’re too much of a man to deal with that, then go whittle a stake and stab yourself in the testicles. If you think you’re too smart of a woman to deal with that too, then yeah I don’t blame you. I don’t know where I stand, but I don’t want to harm my testicles.