My Review of "Status Update"

Status Update came out back in 2018 but I'm sure many of you have never heard of it because it was a bit of an oddity when I saw it available on Netflix. I was just perusing through their catalog and it popped up by accident. Since it seemed a little out of the ordinary I thought I'd give it a try even though I knew it was going to be a pretty cookie cutter film.

The film starts out with the main character Kyle going to play a game of hockey for his high school team. He mentions that he's never played hockey up until that week and he goes on to explain how he got his skills all of a sudden.

Flash back a week or two ahead and we realize that Kyle is a new student at this high school as he has moved from California to move in with his mother. He's bullied at the school and quickly makes friends with a social leper named Lonnie.

One day he's bullied to the point that his phone breaks and he has to get it fixed. He goes into the shopping mall to find a place to get it fixed when he stumbles upon a kiosk operated by an odd vendor. He's really zany and I guess he seems to be trying to bring out his inner genie from Aladdin in his role. For a teen comedy, I guess it seemed okay.

This mysterious vendor can see Kyle's aura and seems to know that he's going through some hardship and lets Kyle know that he's going to give him a phone with a special app. The app is supposed to make his status updates into reality. Obviously Kyle is skeptical of the whole ordeal but at least he gets a new phone out of the whole thing. It didn't even seem as though he had to pay for anything either. I guess you should start questioning things if you don't have to pay for a new phone like that.

Anyways, Kyle gets back with the phone and decides to play around with it by updating his status that his dad has come back with his car from California. He sleeps on it and lo and behold the next morning his car is back and his father takes a plane trip there. He starts to realize that the phone could be more useful than he thought.

He soon uses the app to try to win the heart of a girl he has a crush on. Some of the status updates that he makes don't really go as he intends them to. The app will assume things if you aren't specific. For example he wants to be a classically trained singer but didn't intend to sing like an opera singer. It works way better when he's specific.

Throughout the movie he makes some status updates to help people and get back at others. Some of the status updates are pretty unnecessary if he just uses his head and thinks logically. Many of the problems actually wouldn't happen if he thought a little more logically but then again he's a teenager so it makes more sense.

Still Kyle never seems to be a really bad person throughout the movie. He gets caught up in the usual fame and opportunity cliche that a lot of people get into in these type of movies. You can tell what's going to happen a mile away but that's the reason why you're going to watch this movie anyways.

I kind of wondered what would happen if all of the things that he had added in his status updates were deleted. Would he lose all the skills that he learned because of the status updates in the past? Would each status update override the other status update? There were no real set rules or at least consistent rules to this special power but again that's not the point of the movie. It kind of irked me close to the end though.

Also some of the actors in the movie seemed like they were a little too old to be playing teenager roles. You can even see the wrinkles on their faces. It's kind of the consequences of high definition video. It was weird to see some of the actors playing as teenagers in this movie.

Overall, there were some funny scenes in this movie despite the corniness of the movie. If you're in the right frame of mind this can be a very enjoyable movie but you have to shut off your head to really enjoy it. There are some really awkward scenes like some of the song and dance scenes that go on for quite a long time. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. It was good enough to keep my happy for the duration but I would not want to watch this movie again.