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To the Stars

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HeavyTeens
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Credits

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Cast

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Reviewer

Emily Tsiao

Movie Review

For years now, Iris Deerborne has been mocked and ridiculed by the residents of her small town because she has a weak bladder. “Stinky Drawers,” they call her. She’s been to the doctor multiple times, but physically, there’s nothing wrong with her: It’s all psychosomatic.

Her parents have all but given up on her ever having a normal life (not that her mother doesn’t try to force it to happen). And given a choice, Iris would rather just disappear. But that all changes when Maggie Richmond moves to town.

Maggie takes a liking to Iris and decides to help her fit in better with their classmates. Shockingly, it doesn’t take much. A new makeover and some well-crafted lies about Iris being chosen as a model for a national magazine and suddenly everything’s coming up roses—er, irises.

Iris knows her popularity won’t last forever. You can change your hair and your clothes, but deep down, you’re still going to be the same person you’ve always been. But her newfound confidence has also helped with her incontinence, so she’s OK with that.

Unfortunately, Maggie isn’t. She doesn’t just want to fit in, she needs to. Not being able to fit in is why her parents brought her here to begin with—to start over fresh. But Iris is right: Changing your outward appearance won’t change who you are on the inside.

Positive Elements

After being conditioned for so many years to expect the worst in people, Iris is reluctant to accept Maggie’s kindness. However, she quickly realizes that Maggie is just putting on airs for the kids at school and actually despises them as much as Iris does. And after Maggie sits next to her despite Iris having just wet herself, she allows the friendship to blossom, which in turn reinforces Iris’ confidence.

Both Iris and Maggie’s parents struggle with their daughters being different from most people. However, it’s also clear that they love their girls and just want them to have normal lives. When Iris figures this out, she decides to forgive her mom for the mistakes she’s made.

Jeff, a boy who takes a fancy to Iris, tells her that he liked her even before she got her makeover because she was never “phony” like the rest of the girls at their school. He also tells her that seeing her relax whenever she was alone helped him to come to terms with his own grief regarding his mother’s suicide, believing that his mom needed to be alone to find peace as well.

When people in town start to speak poorly of two women who allegedly committed suicide, Iris defends them, pointing out that they clearly didn’t know what was really going on in those women’s lives.

Spiritual Elements

In a drunken stupor, Maggie says that she went to Hell and saw the devil. She believes herself to be sick in the soul but doesn’t know how to heal.

A man cries out for Jesus in desperation. Maggie’s mother is invited to attend Disciples of Christ, a local church. Her family prays before eating a meal together. A girl crosses herself. Another girl mentions a friend’s dramatic reaction to Christ rising from the dead.

Many people believe the pond near Iris’s house is haunted.

Sexual Content

It is eventually revealed that Maggie is gay. She finds out that Hazel, owner of the beauty salon, is also gay and has been hiding this fact from the townsfolk for several years. They share several intimate glances (one involving a lingering touch on the cheek) before eventually kissing and then having sex. (We briefly see some shadowy silhouettes and hear noises.) This act is witnessed by Hattie, one of Maggie’s classmates, and both Maggie and Hazel are run out of town.

Iris is not gay and her friendship with Maggie is platonic. However, in a moment of vulnerability, Maggie spontaneously kisses her friend.

Maggie skinny dips several times while Iris swims in her nightgown, but Iris joins her in skinny dipping once. (We see the tops of Maggie’s shoulders and the side of Iris’ breast. We also see Iris’ naked body from a great distance as she jumps into the pond).

In an attempt to act normal, Maggie consents to having sex with a boy. (She straddles him, removes her overshirt and kisses him.) However, she later cries in regret and admits that losing her virginity and being gay makes her feel “dirty.” She demonstrates her discomfort with boys when one kisses her on the neck and tries to touch her hair.

Iris and Jeff kiss a few times (once while swimming in their undergarments). Several teenagers undress and swim in their undergarments. A boy flashes several girls (though we don’t see anything). A teacher stops a couple from kissing at a school dance. Teenagers dance closely together. We see a teenage girl’s bra while she is changing in a locker room. We also see Iris from the knees down as she changes her underwear after having at accident at school.

We hear about a woman who got pregnant out of wedlock and another woman who was called the “town punch” for her multiple offences of adultery. Men leer at women multiple times. An adult woman tries to seduce a teenage boy, and he is forced to walk away when she refuses to take no for an answer.

Someone jokes about selling her body. Iris is considered to be a prude by many people (including her own mother) and several people draw attention to her body’s development. Another girl laments her body’s physical immaturity and later talks about stuffing her bra.

Violent Content

A man hits his daughter several times with a belt when she lies to him, bruising her face. It is implied that he does this pretty regularly as she is viewed in a later scene lying on the floor while he stands above her with the belt in hand.

After Hazel and Maggie are caught together, the men of their town go to Hazel’s home with baseball bats and proceed to destroy her property. When she walks out of the house to leave in her car, they smash her windshield, frightening her while continuing to make lewd remarks.

Several boys harass Iris, lobbing crude remarks towards her. One boy knocks her books to the ground; while she is picking them up, he tries to take advantage of her while his friends cheer him on. He is stopped when Maggie hits him in the face with a rock, causing him to bleed. She continues to throw rocks at him and his friends until they drive away. Iris later repeats Maggie’s actions, threatening to kill the boys if they ever touch Iris again.

Iris grabs and hits Hattie when she implies that Maggie drowned herself. We hear about another woman who committed suicide by drowning.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear the f-word twice and the s-word five times. There are also six uses each of “b–ch,” “h—” and “d–n,” three uses of “b–tards” and one use of “a–.” God’s name is taken in vain 10 times (half of them paired with “d–mit”). Jesus’s name is misused twice. Some other insults and derogatory terms include “midget,” “pig,” “dimwit,” “untouchable” and “dyke.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Iris’ mom, Mrs. Deerborne, shows signs of alcoholism and is often seen drinking. During one inebriated instance, she gets into a shouting match with her husband. In another, she wakes Iris in the middle of the night and forces her to don a prom dress despite her daughter’s verbal and physical protests.

Maggie gets drunk on something she says smells like lighter fluid. Several teenagers drink alcohol at a party by the pond. A boy spikes the punch at a school dance with a flask. Some girls talk about a boy bootlegging a bottle of champagne.

People smoke cigarettes throughout the movie (including teenagers).

Other Negative Elements

Maggie decides that the best way to fit in at her new school is to lie. When the lies work and her social status is boosted, she chooses to add in a few lies about Iris to boost her popularity as well. Iris is frustrated by her friend’s lies, but ultimately chooses to tolerate them since she craves Maggie’s friendship. However, when she suspects that Maggie is becoming overwhelmed by her mounting layers of deception, she calls her friend out. Maggie, terrified of anyone finding out her secrets, retaliates cruelly by calling Iris “Stinky Drawers” in front of everyone.

The popular girls at Iris and Maggie’s school are incredibly superficial. They negatively comment on every girl’s appearance (including a larger girl who is part of their inner social circle) and treat Iris like she is filth, even going so far as to tell Maggie that hanging out with her would be “social suicide.” The boys are no better, always eager to go along with what their girlfriends are saying and often objectifying women as well. When Maggie spreads some rumors to help Iris’ social standing, though, they are quick to start treating Iris better. However, when Maggie later betrays Iris, they go right back to their old habits of mocking her and avoiding her.

Mrs. Deerborne is embarrassed by her daughter’s incontinence. Despite claiming that she is tired of the townsfolk talking down to her daughter, Mrs. Deerborne seems to have subconsciously started thinking less of Iris as well. She discourages Iris’ friendship with Maggie because she thinks Maggie is stringing Iris along; when Jeff offers Iris a ride to school, she is annoyed by his “pity.”

Iris’ parents have a loveless marriage. Apparently, they only wed because Iris’ mom got pregnant, and it seems likely she has resented her husband ever since. She frequently goes on about how popular she used to be with boys and complains that her husband only cares about his farm. Iris’ dad is irritated with his wife for her constant drinking and for trying to live vicariously through their daughter.

Maggie’s father gets angry when he catches her hanging out with Iris alone. He reminds her that he quit his job and moved their whole family so that she could start over fresh and threatens to leave her behind if she messes up again. When Maggie later disappears, he realizes that he doesn’t care about her sexual identity anymore and just wants her to come home safely.

A girl decides to skip some meals after her friends critique her weight. A bully knocks a boy’s books out of his hands. Iris and Maggie ditch school one day. Maggie’s parents encourage her to skip school in order to go shopping for a prom dress with her mom. Someone mentions another girl skipping class. Hazel purposely ruins a girl’s hair after she overhears the girl insulting Iris.

A girl scares her friend by pretending a ghost pulled her underwater. Someone jokes about suicide. A woman tactlessly brings up the suicide of Jeff’s mom to him. Hazel mourns the loss of her brother, who died during the Korean War.

A boy urinates in a pond. Someone talks about vomiting on a plane. A girl says that people in the lower class of India bathe in their own waste.

Conclusion

In some significant ways, To the Stars, demonstrates the importance of friendship, of loving each other through the good and the bad, of accepting each other’s differences and flaws. Those are, in isolation, very redemptive themes.

But there’s also a deeper message here that the film’s melodramatic storyline rams home: When we don’t accept people as they are, it can cause terrible damage and lead to tragic consequences.

In this case, a lesbian woman allegedly commits suicide largely because she can no longer cope with society’s rejection. And in Maggie’s situation, we also see that her sexual identity has led to her being beaten by her father and ostracized by her new town (as apparently happened in the last place her family lived as well).

But even as the story invites viewers to sympathize with the cruel intolerance and abusively hateful behavior these women clearly endure, it also caricatures those who hold a biblical worldview that doesn’t affirm and embrace same-sex relationships. Here, Christians are largely treated as being either confused or judgmental hypocrites.

Ultimately, then, this at times racy YA drama sends two very different messages about who’s worthy of acceptance and whose beliefs should be seen as toxic.

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Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.