Hulu released a teen romcom last year called Crush. To me, that title sounds more like a horror movie than a romcom. Well, let’s see how horrific it is.

Paige (Rowan Blanchard) is a high school student dreaming of attending an elite art school. She needs to submit a piece of art based on the prompt “your happiest moment.” All of the moments she can think of revolve around her crush, Gabby Campos (Isabella Ferreira). When the school principal accuses Paige of being KingPun, a local artist leaving pun-themed graffiti on the walls, she agrees to join the track team as an extracurricular and find out the true identity of KingPun. Gabby’s sister, AJ (Auli’i Cravalho), is assigned to train Paige, who is painfully unathletic. As she spends more time with AJ, Paige finds that she no longer likes Gabby. She now has a crush on AJ. But this only complicates things. Oh, and she still has to figure out who is behind KingPun!

Crush was a pretty cute movie. It seemed a little weird that a majority of the characters were gay but maybe that is just the group of kids Paige hangs around. Or maybe it’s because the whole movie revolves around Paige’s emotions. The writers didn’t want her crushing on a straight girl because there would be no resolution there so they had to put almost everyone on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

I think my biggest issue with Crush is that there isn’t a lot of substance in the plot. Paige didn’t dig too deeply to try to figure out the identity of KingPun. Either we should have seen Paige trying harder to figure out her submission artwork or they should have spent more time trying to figure out KingPun. As it is, we’re mostly treated to track team antics. Which, by the way, everyone seems to be on the track team too. This is a very small world she lives in.

Since there were a few cute moments in the movie, I’m rating it a 3 out of 5. It could have been a lot worse but it could have been a whole lot better.