While this film has many sweet elements and the principle actors are adorable, the story slows itself down to a ridiculous pace, and everything is ruined when this teenage pair crawls in bed together for a too-passionate night in a Hawaii hotel. What a disappointment! The director uses terrific devices in portraying Olly’s and Maddy’s texting conversations, showing us the pair in imaginary environments as they work out their affection. Unfortunately the most likely audience for this high-school-ish drama is a starry-eyed middle school girl—the very person we’d recommend not seeing it.

The characters demonstrate wonderful selflessness and they are both brave, smart and generous people. But after hanging with this sweet but dull story for an hour, cheering for the character development to go anywhere fresh, we’re left with a head-shaking revelation of more really bad parenting. This movie leaves us believing that parents are the single biggest obstacle to all happiness.

“Everything Everything” is the opposite of a family movie, and doesn’t leave us much interesting space for healthy conversation about real life issues or relationships.