REVIEW: All Together Now

The unceasing search for new acting talent to mine continues with Netflix's new film, All Together Now, which premiered this week on the service. This film features Moana alum Auli'i Cravalho as Amber Appleton, a bright but underprivileged high schooler with high aspirations. Netflix's new film plays like a trial run for Cravalho to see if this Disney starlet can lead a live-action film outside the Disney umbrella. Cravalho would need to play against a slightly stronger narrative backbone for us to know for sure, but early signs are promising. 

All Together Now follows Amber Appleton, a musically talented teen overflowing with love for her classmates, her coworkers, and her community. Amber reads like George Bailey reincarnated as a high school girl, throwing herself into any opportunity to better the world around her, like hosting her high school's annual for benefit Variety Show. But Amber's boundless optimism conceals an impoverished home life. She and her mother, Becky, secretly live in a school bus that her mother drives during the day. Amber spends her precious spare moments working three different jobs hoping to earn enough money for them to secure an apartment--any apartment--but Amber may get to set her sights a little higher when the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania takes interest in her. The future that opens up to her promises to take her far beyond the bus yard, but only if she can make herself vulnerable in a way she's never known before.

Amber's reluctance to share her double-life with her friends is framed as a search for independence, an insistence she can take on her allotted trials without the assistance she so readily extends to others. Perhaps a way of distancing herself from the emotional dependency she observes in her mother with her toxic, abusive ex-boyfriend, to whom she returns repeatedly. Most of the psychology behind Amber's actions is subtext, and the film is better for it. The film shows good instincts on when a character might reasonably spell out what's on her mind and when to let the actions speak for themselves.

Strangely enough, the film is only casually interested in the audition plotline. Similarly, the film only offers Cravalho one opportunity to show off her vocal prowess. The movie's premiere song "Feels Like Home" only features once, and it does not fulfill the function one might have supposed for a movie centered around an audition to an elite university. Appreciate it when it comes, because it only comes once.

Amber Appleton bears more than a little resemblance to the optimistic, self-assured, good-role-model-for-little-girls character of Moana. That Cravalho slips into this garb so well works both to the film's detriment and benefit. This is apparently where Cravalho hits her stride, and it's certainly a stride, but the Moana parallels are sometimes too glaring, particularly in the first half-hour of the film before the tone darkens and the tensions mount.

If Cravalho glows slightly brighter when she's allowed to be a modern Disney Princess, it is at least partially due to the insistence that the film not get too bogged down by its own innate tragedy. The film plays with some rather heavy material--poverty, alcoholism, abusive relationships, etc.--but does so within the fence of a PG rating. 

The film isn't necessarily wrong to repackage real-world issues for a PG audience, but tiptoeing around some of the weightier content (we are told Becky's abusive-ex Oliver is bad for Amber and Becky, and Amber briefly describes his abusive behavior to another character, but big bad Oliver himself never makes an appearance on-screen) does deny the film some emotional volatility and Cravalho the chance to really hit the acting high notes. 

Just the same, Cravalho is pleasant to watch, and she does get unexpected moments, unexpected emotional beats, to exhibit intelligent performance instincts.

Though this is certainly Cravalho's film, she is supported by a fantastic ensemble cast including television comedian of legend, Carol Burnett, in the role of the most well-dressed senior citizen you've ever met. Of special note is Justina Machado, Becky, who paints the sympathetic yet frustrating picture of a woman who may be more of a child than the daughter who depends on her.

Centering a plot's development on when a character decides to ask for help is an interesting choice, but there's unspoken wisdom in highlighting this internal conflict, and it's woven integrally and deliberately into the narrative. It was only when I was watching the climactic variety show that a lot of the carefully orchestrated pieces in this film became clear.

Do we have a future star in Auli'i Cravalho? Does Auli'i Cravalho have a future in acting outside of Disney? My money is on yes, should Cravalho choose to pursue that path. She'll need just a little more to work with, but she can handle it. Take her, she's ready.

        --The Professor