By Roxy Augeri ’20

When I first heard that they were making a movie out of the novel “Every Day” by David Levithan, I did a little dance in my head and set my calendar to make sure I could attend the premiere. After finishing the book in a day, I thought I would love the movie just as much as I had loved reading the book.

Sadly, director Michael Sucsy wasn’t able to execute the same powerful message Levithan got across in his book. The production of the movie didn’t do a good job showcasing the characters that made the story so special.

“Every Day” is a story following a teenager, named A, who wakes up every day in a new body. A can access the memories for the person they are inhabiting for the day, and is always in a body the same age as them in around the same area.

One day, A wakes up in Justin, who is dating Rhiannon. A falls in love with Rhiannon and unveils their identity to her. The story follows both characters as they navigate love with each other in A’s unconventional situation.

David Levithan was able to take an unusual plot and turn it into something magical. I simply wasn’t able to put the book down. With each new day and each new body that A was inhabiting, I was able to really dive in to the characters and become invested in them. I wasn’t able to put the book down because all I wanted was to know what happened to the characters to make sure everything turned out okay for them.
The movie, however, did not have the same effect. First of all, A wasn’t even introduced as a character until about 30 minutes into the movie. And although the plot went in the same order as the book was written, the opening scene between Rhiannon and A was drawn out.

One of my biggest disappointments, however, was with the movie’s portrayal of the most impactful character in the book, Vic. Vic is a transgender male, and a large part of the story was about how A’s situation isn’t all that different from Vic’s.

In the book, it is Vic who is essential to the overall message of the story — that love doesn’t conform to one gender or body type, and that you are in love with the person not the body they are in. But in the movie, he was given underwhelming screen time and the message gets lost. By cutting the scene to a brief interaction at school with Rhiannon, it took away from the overall importance of a confident transgender figure.

Another one of the main problems with the movie was the casting. The chemistry between Angourie Rice, who played the love interest, Rhiannon, and A was completely lacking. The entirety of the film felt extremely forced; it seemed as if scenes were merely being checked off a list.

For example, when A is in Justin’s body in the opening scene on a trip with Rhiannon, all of the intimate talking scenes were uncomfortable to watch. I found myself going on my phone for the entirety of the speaking parts of the movie; there wasn’t anything captivating about them.

I will credit the actors in that they were able to embody the uncomfortableness of A being in an unfamiliar person through their body language. Justice Smith, who played Rhiannon’s boyfriend, Justin, was the first face that we see A occupy and I thought he did a nice job embodying what I would think A would feel like in a body.

I also acknowledge that a story like this is hard to translate onto the big screen because of its complexity. When I was reading it in a book, I was able to spend much more time getting used to the characters with no time limit, while the the movie had to accomplish that in a rushed 97 minutes..
However, overall, the story has an extremely important message about being devoted to being yourself, no matter what type of body you’re in. I recommend everyone read the book. Watch the movie rendition at your own risk.