Movie Review: 'Midnight Sun'

As a much younger and more rash critic, I created a nasty, dismissive shorthand for movies that centered on teenage girl characters who die of vaguely familiar diseases slowly enough to have a literally once in a lifetime love affair. I referred to these movies as "Dead Ingenue Movies." I coined the term in my admittedly nasty review of 2003’s A Walk to Remember.

I have since grown up and while I will still throw the term around when another Lifetime-esque, pretty with cancer movie pops up ala the new teen drama Midnight Sun. This teen weeper invites such dismissive terminology what with its rather glib take on serious life and death issues, but my term, "Dead Ingenue Movie," though accurate, is far too glib in itself to be a fair take on this movie or any movie.

Midnight Sun stars Bella Thorne as Katie, a teenager who has never really seen a sunset. Katie suffers from a one in a million variation of Skin Cancer that is so severe that if she were touched by sunlight for a moment she could get cancer and die slowly and quite painfully. Despite her disease however, Katie is a rather delightful teenager with a doting father, played by comedian Rob Riggle, and a best friend, Morgan, played by Quinn Shepard.

While Katie has been sheltered from many of the biggest teenage milestones she has managed to maintain a long term crush on a boy. Charlie (Patrick Schwarzenegger) may not know that Katie exists but she knows all about him. For nearly a decade Katie has watched Charlie skateboard past her house on the way to and from school with him none the wiser. She’s tracked his clothing and hairstyles and any detail she can gather in order to maintain their dreamed love affair.

The dream then comes true when Katie and Charlie meet at a train station late at night when Katie has snuck out of her house to play guitar for the folks coming and going on local trains. When she leaves her song book behind by accident, Charlie takes the opportunity to see her again and the two begin a romance that may be doomed by Katie trying to cover up her illness.

If you don’t know where Midnight Sun is headed, you really are not trying. On top of being glib and using cancer as a love story shorthand, Midnight Sun is wildly predictable. Even the film’s poster is a spoiler alert about the ending of the movie. This is a weeper, a movie with the figuratively armed intent of forcing tears from your eyes as you watch Katie die from what I can only, glibly refer to as "Pretty Cancer."

Director Scott Speer, a veteran of TV and the Step Up movie franchise, directs Midnight Sun with the subtlety of a hammer to the forehead. It’s made worse because the cancer depicted is a real life cancer variation and one that legitimately destroys lives. The filmmakers do little to bring gravity or purpose to the exploitation of this disease, not even offering a words on screen pity mention of some charity specific to this rare condition.

The cast of Midnight Sun does their best to elevate this weak material with Rob Riggle as the standout. Not known as a dramatic actor, Riggle is incredibly moving and genuine as Katie’s doofy but strong dad. A late scene in which he is talking with Katie’s doctor in which he is choking on his words talking about having done everything right in keeping her from the sun is legitimately heartbreaking and hints at a much better movie.

Bella Thorne isn’t bad in Midnight Sun but rather, she is trapped in a formula film and is doing her damnedest to rise above it. Thorne occasionally reminded me of a young Julia Roberts in her bubbly quirky prime with her little flourishes of dialogue. Sadly, Thorne can’t overcome her complete lack of chemistry with wood sculpture love interest Patrick Schwarzenegger.

Patrick Schwarzenegger is a really handsome kid and a really dull actor based off his work in Midnight Sun. Bland and disinterested, Schwarzenegger’s laconic approach to the seriousness of Midnight Sun too often lets the air out of formula scenes that really need a strong actor with major charisma to get the audience past the over-familiarity and predictability.

The nicest thing I can say about Midnight Sun is that it is not nearly as bad as something like Walk to Remember, a "Dead Ingenue Movie."