'Alex Strangelove' Netflix Review

Alex Strangelove is a movie that I don’t think anyone expected to come out on Netflix, but given that it is pride month I welcomed it with open arms. I’ve seen both sides of the argument that some people loved it while others saw it as a failed attempt at mixing comedy with a LGBT love story. For me the movie was fantastic at showing all the emotions that I never could explain to anyone. It showed almost every emotion that I felt during my coming out as gay.

Alex Truelove (played by Daniel Doheny) perfectly showed the denial phase that I think some of us would be familiar with. Throughout the story he battles himself to try to convince himself that he was just having a man crush on another guy. This is something that my straight friends never understood about why it took me so long to come out, but here it was perfectly shown in a movie and they started to get it.

The next phase we see is his angry phase. This phase I’m not sure if we would care to admit that we went through this phase, but I can speak for myself when I say that I definitely got angry when anyone even mentioned that I was gay. It’s not something I care to admit, but it’s true that I would block people out of my life and shut down when they would ask me if I was gay. Again this was something that my straight friends could not understand because some of them witnessed me going through this themselves. I couldn’t explain it to them but this movie did just that.

The ending of the movie is where it really got me and I started to cry. It ends with him finally admitting to everyone that he is gay and he gets to have another chance with Elliot (played by Antonio Marziale). It wouldn’t be a true gay love story if it didn’t have another hiccup where Alex freaks out about his peers looking at the two as they dance. Elliot decides that maybe it’s not worth being with someone struggling to find themselves, but then Alex realizes that this is his chance to finally be happy and goes back after Elliot. Again this is a perfect example of how I think most of us felt when we started dating the same gender and we would hold hands in the hallways at high school and felt like everyone was looking. This movie showed every phase that I personally went through and just watching this made me feel better about it.

However this would not be a true review if I didn’t address some of the things that weren’t so great about the movie. First off there were many times where the kissing scenes and sex scenes were just way to awkward to watch and made it borderline unbearable to listen to. Secondly, Claire (played by Madeline Weinstein) forgave Alex for cheating on him way too quickly. He told her that he was cheating on her and then she walked in on him having sex only to forgive him just because he said he was gay. Lastly, The phases that I talked about, I did love that they had each one; but he went through all the phases in a week. These phases took me years to go through and even then I still had problems; I understand that movies can only be so long, but really only a week? With all this said though the movie was great and I would recommend it to any LGBT kids, as well as parents or friends who want to better understand.