How to Date Billy Walsh
(98 minutes, Prime Video)
2 stars
High school rom-coms. They can be the kind of movies that you keep coming back to well into adulthood just because they perfectly hit the spot and captured a generational moment.
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From the John Hughes movies of the 1980s to the likes of Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You, Mean Girls, She's The Man, Easy A, Love Simon, To All the Boys I've Loved Before.
There's so many films that have that perfect mix of charismatic leads, iconic music, instantly quotable lines and fashion moments.
The streaming era has brought with it a bunch of high school rom-coms, especially on Netflix, that have been very hit and miss.
For every To All the Boys and The Kissing Booth, there's a He's the Man and Senior Year.
That brings us to Prime's latest offering, How to Date Billy Walsh.
For something different, this film is British - the list of British teen rom-coms is significantly shorter than their American counterparts.
But, sadly, the more understated British sense of humour fails to pervade through this messy, tonally confused film and How to Date Billy Walsh ends up on the less-than-good end of the scale.
Our protagonist is Archie (Sebastian Croft, Heartstopper), a rich yet unpopular senior student at a fancy British school who has been lifelong best friends with Amelia (Bridgerton's Charithra Chandran) since they were switched at birth in the hospital (off to a good start already).
But Archie's been harbouring a secret since they were about five years old. He is madly in love with his bestie.
He's tried to confess his feelings a few times throughout the years but has never quite been able to get the words out - one of the only truly funny moments of the film sees Archie accidentally say "I love Yusuf" instead of "I love you", leading to some supportive if unnecessary best friend moments.
As their final school term kicks off - which will, of course, be capped by the school leavers' ball (the British analogue for the American prom or Australian formal) - Archie has decided that he will finally tell Amelia how he feels, but there's an unexpected hiccup.
A new American exchange student, Billy Walsh (Tanner Buchanan, from the aforementioned disaster that was He's All That), joins the school and Amelia is immediately smitten. Archie's plans go awry as Amelia is determined to date the LA expat.
When Amelia overhears that Archie's parents reignited their spark with the help of the mysterious "Love Doctor" and asks her best bud to put her in contact so she can catch Billy's eye, Archie instead pretends to be said Love Doctor through video chat, using an ageing filter. It is as lame as it sounds, especially with the random dance montage through the filter.
Throughout the whole film Archie spends a great deal of time breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience. It becomes grating quite quickly.
It's also confusing as to who the intended audience for this film actually is - the plotting, acting and general feel all give very tween/early teen/Disney Channel vibes, but there's fairly liberal use of F-bombs, which suggests an older audience, who would inevitably find the whole thing cringey. Especially with lines like "If you think too loudly, you'll never hear the answer you're looking for".
On the plus side, How to Date Billy Walsh does provide a great opportunity to remember the lilting Jason Mraz song I Won't Give Up.
And if you're a fan of young British singer Maisie Peters, she is also there as the performer at the dance.
The supporting cast includes Nick Frost, Lucy Punch and Kunal Nayyar.
