Crushing It

While I am no longer in the target demographic for teenage romances, by quite a lot, I certainly appreciate that they keep making stories that let more young people feel like they too can find their happily ever after. You know, that whole thing about representation mattering and all.

The latest teen rom-com is Hulu’s “Crush.” High school senior looks for her college application inspiration in her crush, but somehow ends up also crushing on her crush’s sister? Hey, it’s a tad incestuous but I’ll take it. Also, I love how this movie follows the well-executed teen rom-com formula of using a largely unknown young cast spiked with a few seasoned, funny adults (in this case Megan Mullally, Aasif Mandvi and Michelle Buteau). The “other” sister AJ might not be instantly recognizable, unless you’ve watched “Moana” a bajillion times like me. It’s out star Auli'i Cravalho, who came out as bisexual two years ago.

I had to chuckle at our heroine bemoaning her so-called limited dating options at her high school from the trailer. Back in my day, ummm, we didn’t have any. But then, I guess that’s progress.

I don’t know if this movie will be any good. But even if it isn’t, it’s still wonderful that it exists. When I think back at all the teen movies I watched when I was a teen, I couldn’t dream of having a selection of queer teeange romances made for mainstream audiences to choose from. Heck, I couldn’t imagine queer issues being covered in anything that wasn’t a Very Special Episodes. Like I was saying, progress.