The Upstart

Movies are supposed to be either happy, sad, scary, funny or some combination of that, but even though I didn’t hate the Speech and Debate movie, it can’t be categorized in any of those general places. I thought it had one or two funny elements and as a member of my school’s forensics team I found it mildly relatable, but overall it was slow and had a general end with a quick resolution that came before there was any introduction about the solution (if you know anything about storyboards.)

Briefly, the summary of the movie is that three kids, one girl that loves to act, one boy who is gay and has opinions on politics and lgbtq rights, and another boy from out of town who also has issues on his mind come together and find a way to get out of the cliches and problems at their school, Speech and Debate. They create a team of three and start to prepare for their first competition. That day, after each person competes, and gets disqualified, from their events, they go to a bar, get drunk, and have to spend the night at a motel. After learning about the different modes of speech and debate, they go in front of their school board with a performance that did what they had wanted to do all along, change their school for the better.

This movie is honestly just relatable on my end between the theater, forensics, and overall high school girl and lgbtq references, but if you don’t fit any of these categories, it’s not worth it. To be clear, the movie dragged on in between the snip-its of funny jokes that some people may not even get in the first place. It focused on the main girl character too much because I would have liked to know more about the other two in the group.

This movie is on Netflix if you have any interest in checking it out because it is short and it wasn’t a total waste of my time, but if you are looking for a good summer movie to watch as we near the days of school starting, I recommend Spider-Man Homecoming or Dunkirk.

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