Well, we finally made it. We finally made it to the finish line of the Out of my League trilogy. And let me tell you, it was a journey to get here.
For now, we’re just going to plow on, assuming that you’re up to speed about the nature of these characters’ lives.
(Like the other two films before this, I watched the dubbed version of Forever Out of My League with the English voice actors and not the original Italian version with subtitles. However, the voice performances and the English translation have nothing to do with my review, and they weren't taken into consideration about my thoughts on the film when writing this post.)
Let us discuss the nature of this third and final film in the trilogy, and decide if it was worth any of the praise and/or criticism I gave the first two.
Let’s begin: (SPOILERS, I GUESS)
Category 1: Plot- D+
Based on my experience with the second movie, I was expecting this movie to be bad, and so when it turned out to be bland it was both a disappointment and a relief.
However, like Still Out of My League, there are multiple plot lines in this movie, but no overarching, connecting plot. I suppose it could be argued that the main plot is Marta's recovery from cystic fibrosis, because that does seem to have a lot more screen time in this movie, but I would still argue that this is still only one of many subplots in this movie.
Let's get into it.
Now, because this film has three main characters (Marta, Federica, and Jacopo) you would think that they would all have something equally important to do. However, as you can probably guess, most of the subplots in this movie are completely unnecessary and borderline useless.
Again, like Still Out of My League, Forever Out of My League has an A, B, C, and D plot line. Again, the A and C plot lines are related to one another, the B plot line is completely out of left field, and the D plot line could be cut from the movie entirely, and no one would notice.
To break all of them down- here we go:
The A plot follows Marta after she had lung transplant surgery to cure her cystic fibrosis. In the hospital, she sees Gabriele, and they get back together. After her recovery, she moves out of her apartment with Frederica and Jacopo to move in with Gabriele. She seems mostly okay, but is secretly worried that her cystic fibrosis is coming back. The related C plot follows Gabriele, as he attempts to locate Marta’s grandmother so that they can reconcile their relationship just in case something happens to Marta. Apparently, Marta and her grandmother did not get along at all, and Marta strongly dislikes her grandmother (who was never discussed prior to this film), to the point where she often tells people that she has no living family.
The random B plot in this film follows Jacopo and Frederica (who immediately quits her job at the beginning of this movie, thus making the entire job plot line of the second film more jarring and unnecessary in the context of this trilogy, but I digress). They need to rent out Marta’s room while she’s living with Gabriele in order to make rent, however, they end up renting out the room to a single mother with a baby. Unfortunately, one day the mother leaves the baby unattended in the apartment for several days with a note asking them to care for her. Thus, the unlikely pair are stuck with a baby that they have to care for until the mother returns.
The final official plot of this movie has to deal with the completely unnecessary characters, Giacomo and Rebecca. Rebecca, if you remember from the second film, was Frederica’s famous cousin who was dating a loser. Well, in this move they’re still dating, and they go through some truly heinous relationship shit that really shouldn’t be in this movie.
Oh, there is also a romantic subplot featuring Jacopo and Marta’s doctor, but no one has time for how pointless all that is.
Surprisingly, despite all of the plot points, this film is stitched together better than the previous movie in this series. That said, this movie was also more boring than Still Out of My League. Whereas the plots from the last movie were messy and bad, these plots are just… kind of slow. The most interesting drama that took place in this film was between the two characters who have the least to do in it (Rebecca & Giacomo).
Again, Rebecca and Giacomo don't need to be in this movie at all, but they're still around, because apparently this movie cares so much about continuity with the other films (*rolls eyes*).
I'll touch on this series' problematic continuity later, but for now, let's get into what actually worked about this movie.
Category 2: Themes- B-
I’ll give this movie props for having a theme and sticking to it. The first movie had a theme of “found family” with the three main characters referring to each other as their family. Notably in the first film Marta mentions that her parents are both dead and that Frederica and Jacopo are her family and have been since they were children.
The second movie veers away from this theming (instead choosing to girlboss too close to the sun with Frederica’s whole #metoo moment), but it has returned for this final installment.
In this film, Marta is forced confront the fact that she actually does have family that is still alive, her wicked old grandmother who she doesn’t speak to. She chooses not to tell her about any of her surgeries or medical problems, and instead relies on her best friends- her chosen family- to the point of becoming co-dependent on them.
This causes Marta to move out of her apartment with Jacopo and Frederica and move in with Gabriele instead so as to not worry them if she were to get sick again. However, of course they’re worried about her, and they remain like a chosen family, (SPOILER) even when Marta gets sick once more and goes back into the hospital.
(SPOILER, AGAIN) Even when Marta’s grandmother visits her in the hospital at the end of the movie, the film reinforces the theme of found family, because Marta’s grandmother admitted to not being a good parent or grandparent.
Honestly, I believe that the overall theme of this film was probably the strongest aspect of the entire movie, and it ties the series up with a nice little bow.
Category 3: Cinematography- C
With each movie in this series the cinematography gets less and less impressive.
The cinematography in this movie isn’t bad per say, it’s just not special. There is nothing about Forever Out of My League that makes it stand out visually from any other high-budget TV soap or mid-budget Netflix movie. Like everything else in this film, I was left feeling bored by how flat everything looked and felt. The colors were not warm and overly saturated like they were in the first two movies. In fact, there was no visual flair at all in this film.
It was just... a movie.
This is fine, but not what I came into this experience hoping for. I suppose a normal looking film is better than a visually horrible one, but I just wished that this movie was more visually memorable, especially because the first two movies had more going for them in this category.
Category 4: Characters- C-
Unlike the previous movie, I was mostly okay with the characters in this film (sparing a couple of them, which we’ll get to in a moment). Marta and her grandmother’s dynamic, while not previously discussed in any of the other movies, surprisingly worked for me, and I wasn’t as upset at Marta for keeping secrets from people like I was in the previous movie. Everything she did seemed logical and understandable to a point.
As I mentioned before, Jacopo was briefly dating Marta’s doctor. It didn’t really work out, though, and so I don’t have much to say about them other than I’m glad Jacopo was dating someone who actually wanted to be with him unlike the previous movie. He was a much better friend to Marta in this movie, although I’m still not Jacopo's biggest fan because he seemed a little clingy, and his codependence between Marta and Frederica was likely the reason why the doctor broke up with him.
Surprisingly, Federica has been nothing but lovely throughout all of these movies. She’s been mostly unproblematic the entire time, and frankly she was a saint in this film for taking care of someone else’s baby with no indication of if or when the mother was going to return. Overall, 10/10 for Frederica. No notes.
…Then there’s Gabriele. (*sigh*)
I know I went off on him in my review of the last movie, but he’s actually a little less problematic in this film, albeit the same amount of anxious-obsessive, if you ask me.
Gabriele’s entire plot in this film revolves around him trying to make contact with Marta’s grandmother so that she knows Marta is sick and just had a lung transplant. This seems wholesome at first, considering that at the beginning of this film, he and Marta make up after the whole debacle with Tommaso (if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you need to read the Still Out of My League review first). It seems like he is trying to make things right, and connect Marta to her last living relative. Only, Marta expressly tells him that she wants nothing to do with her mean old grandmother, and YET HE KEEPS TRYING TO REACH OUT TO HER FOR MARTA.
I understand that his intentions were pure in this film compared to the last one, but I just took this as proof that Gabriele doesn’t listen, and he has no concept of boundaries. Marta directly tells him that she doesn’t want anything to do with her grandmother due to previous abuse, and then Gabriele has to stick his nose into her family business to repair something that neither of them really wanted repaired. His anxious-obsessive personality wreaks of “I know what’s best for you,” and I didn’t like it.
Finally, there’s Rebecca and Giacomo. (*rolls eyes*)
Again, Rebecca and Giacomo are barely in this movie. They’re in the film for a combined total of about 10 minutes, but BOY do they leave an impact. If I didn’t feel anything about their cliche relationship before this film, I definitely have opinions now, and my opinion is that Giacomo is a saint, and Rebecca is the second worst character in this entire series (the first is Gabriele, obviously).
I say that Rebecca is the second worst person in this entire series because even though she’s dating Giacomo and claims to love him, the moment she sees him gain a shred of confidence or respect in public with other people, she feels threatened. This would be okay, if she chose to talk to him about her feelings and insecurities in their relationship. But you already know she didn’t do that, right? So, what does she do instead?
I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with shmublic humiliation.
Rebecca wanted so badly to remain the hot popular one in their relationship that she was determined to pull her boyfriend down a peg FOR LITERALLY NO REASON. So, she posts a humiliating video of Giacomo peeing himself in fear after being threatened at a party before they were dating. Which is a vile and awful thing to do to someone you aren’t dating, let alone someone you introduced to your parents.
Eventually she fesses up to posting the video of him (after it went semi-viral) and like a saint, Giacomo forgives her, accepts her apology, and resumes dating her. I was and remain FLOORED by this. He knew his girlfriend was a shit bag and he just accepted her for the shit bag she was.
Couldn’t be me. (And again, their plot line has nothing- and I mean NOTHING- to do with Marta or even Frederica for that matter, so why are they in this movie?)
My summary of the characters is that Giacomo and Frederica are basically saints, while everyone else in this series is varying degrees of terrible.
Category 5: Pacing- C-
I’m not gonna lie, this movie was rough to get through. And it wasn’t because it was messy and cliche like the previous one, or campy and dramatic like the first one, but because this movie was just…boring.
A large portion of this movie takes place in the hospital with Marta coming in and out of examination and surgery, and it kind of makes this movie drag on. To top it off, none of the plots feature any exciting drama. Everything that happens is grounded in reality and so there are a lot of scenes where not much is happening or the characters are just hanging out with no underlying conflict.
(SPOILER) It’s not until about an hour into the movie that something finally starts to happen. Marta breaks into a coughing fit and begins to panic about her CF returning, even though she’s already had a lung transplant. This is when I was the most engaged, because then it seemed like something was going to happen. At that point, either Marta was going to be fine, or she was going to die. This moment added stakes for me, so I felt like I wasn’t watching such a dry movie.
I will admit, there are some good moments towards the end of the movie, like the conversation that Marta has with her grandmother. It’s actually surprisingly poignant, and it completes Gabriele’s story arc for this movie. There is also another really good scene at the end of the film in which all of the characters are gathered at the hospital, thinking that Marta is going to die. (SPOILER) They play this scene really seriously as if Marta has already passed away, only to reveal that she’s going to live and everything is fine. Everyone is elated, and then the movie ends.
Overall, I think that the best aspect of the pacing is that Forever Out of My League truly had an ending, and it wasn’t just a teaser for another movie like the second one was.
This movie truly was the end of an era, and I'm grateful for that.
Category 6: Continuity- D
The one thing I can say about the Out of My League franchise is that it's a little all over the place. Over the course of three movies, there've been two romantic leads, multiple subplots that went nowhere, a random family member appearing in the third film, and a battle with cystic fibrosis that is only mentioned in these movies for the sake of plot convenience.
I hate to say it, but as soon as the films wrote off Marta's first love interest, Arturo, they kind of destroyed the continuity of the Out of My League universe. Because of that, the second movie, Still Out of My League, suffers from having a new romantic lead with new problems. It's pretty clear that the original Out of My League was meant to be a standalone film, as it ends with the two main characters, Arturo and Marta, literally getting married. However, I'm sure the reception to the original film was positive enough to warrant two additional films, whether or not the story was strong enough to fill out two more movies.
I stand by the opinion that Arturo shouldn't have been replaced in the second and third movies, but I'm sure the actor (Giuseppe Maggio) had better opportunities, or perhaps a conflicting schedule. He was also in the Italian Netflix movie, Four to Dinner (which I haven't seen) that premiered right around the time Still Out of My League launched on Netflix in the U.S. Based on the direction that Out of My League movies went after his exit, I'm not sure I blame him for not being involved in the later projects.
However, ignoring the ending of the first movie and presuming that Arturo and Marta truly did break up as the second movie suggests, it's incredibly clear to me that Forever Out of My League should’ve been the second and final movie in this franchise. Forever Out of My League feels like a more natural continuation of Federica and Jacopo's B plot from Out of My League, and it helps to build on the character development for Marta and her cystic fibrosis more than the actual sequel (which mostly forgets she has it until the end of the film when she's ready for a transplant). In my opinion, if you were to ask me which of these movies are canon, I would say Still Out of My League never happened and doesn't exist, and Forever Out of My League is the true sequel.
All conversations with me about this trilogy will henceforth be exactly this: "The Out of My League trilogy? What trilogy? You mean that cute duology with the sequel that only kind of relates to the first movie? Oh yeah! It's weird that they replaced the main guy, but it's still fine, I guess..."
Overall, watching this series has been interesting. Something I appreciated about the end of this film was the inclusion of the actors' audition tapes for the roles of Marta, Federica, and Jacopo, especially since they’ve been the core of this series since the beginning. It was a nice way to send them off and to acknowledge (and confirm) that this is the end of the line for the Out of My League franchise.
Honestly, I’m kind of just glad it’s over.
This trilogy kind of feels like if The Kissing Booth trilogy and the To All the Boys trilogy had an Italian baby. I would be inclined to say that the baby favors To All the Boys more, but there are definitely some Kissing Booth-esque moments in Still Out of My League that are hard to overlook.
In any event, I'm glad I was able to write about all three of these films on this blog. This was the first trilogy that I've ever reviewed, and frankly, it was a lot of fun while it lasted.
*slow claps* The trilogy has come to an end. And I also think it's safe to say that you put more thought into this review than the writers put into these three movies.
ReplyDeleteHonestly this seems like the least likely franchise ever. A romance movie about a girl with an illness is pretty common, but they're not the type of story to ever garner sequels (y'know, because they often die in the end). You can also tell when writers are out of ideas when they invent characters that never should have existed, like an evil grandma when a character went on the record saying they had no family.
One thing I gotta know is, did you feel anything when you thought Marta was dead?
Here's the thing: Did I cry? Kind of. I definitely got misty eyed despite everything, because believe it or not the ending of this movie is better than the entirety of the second film. When you think about it, it actually is wild that they used a girl's life-threatening illness as a selling point for a romantic trilogy, but at least it has a happy ending.
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