Beautiful Disaster (2023) - Movie Review

After the last two After films, I figured that we had already reached Peak Fanfiction. Between After Ever Happy cutting the pretence and turning its male lead into a glorified fanfic writer, and After Everything bending over backwards about the creepy undertones of legitimising that kind of writing like this, I thought we had officially hit the ceiling. But no, it seems that Wattpad still have at least one more direction to go, and it might be the most embarrassing one yet. See, Beautiful Disaster, the latest product to come out of the Wattpad assembly line, shows the publisher now starting to make fanfiction… about themselves.

Beyond its initial premise of Fight Club as a rom-com, with virginal Abby (Virginia Gardner) falling in love with underground MMA fighter Travis (Dylan Sprouse), there’s an awful lot of references here to Wattpad’s more ‘famous’ features. And not just theirs either as, in-between the plentiful After and Kissing Booth drops, there’s even dialogue referencing 365 Days. It appears that this 5^th Wave has reached the point of comfort where even the barest semblance of shame that it might have possessed has completely evaporated.

Indeed, the entire plot is various flavours of shameless, with one absolutely bonkers development after another. It really says something when Abby goes on a first date with the disposable love interest (who is so disposable that I’ve just taken to calling him Human Drywall), and he decides to take her to see a theatre show of Titus Andronicus, the scenario somehow becomes less unhinged when it’s revealed that it’s just another Fight Club scene. Credit where it’s due, the actual fight choreography is decent and the camera work lets it show, but it’s still bewildering to see in this context.

The presentation otherwise is just obnoxious, from the sometimes-intentionally baffling sex scenes, the casually out-of-pocket nature of a lot of the dialogue, the sudden detour into Vegas for some 21-lite antics; I’ll admit that I got plentiful laughs out of just how bizarre this whole thing is.

But of course, that same feeling of being settled in and having the freedom to do whatever the damn hell it pleases, to hell with sense, also comes out in some pretty damn ugly ways. For as much as it (seemingly) pokes fun at the formula for these stories, it’s even more willing to play all of the same aggressively toxic attitudes about sex and relationships completely straight. Like, beyond the extent that even the worst of those films tried, this bends over backwards to actively excuse shitty and possessive behaviour. The dynamic between Abby and Travis ends up making both genders look bad, showing men as being (at best) barely in control of their sexual urges, and women as perpetually leading them on. The amount of times that she firmly tells him “No” and he just… keeps going is rather unpleasant, as much as I continued laughing out of sheer incredulity.

Y’know, originally, I wasn’t even going to get into the behind-the-scenes drama concerning the source material’s original author (and subsequent co-writer of this film) Jamie McGuire, and her reputation for dumpster fire takes online… but when you go ahead and include them in your creative work, along with a random dig at Obamacare, you’re kinda forcing my hand here. Separation between art and artist goes both ways.

Basically, it’s everything bad and everything ironically entertaining about this entire cinematic phenomenon wrapped up in a single film. Or, rather, two films, since the follow-up to this was apparently already done filming before this one even came out, such is the guarantee for fan and snarker traffic within this demographic. After souring on After earlier this month, I’m just surprised that I got any mirth out of this to begin with. The 5^th Wave is still finding new ways to mutate and generally make an arse of itself, and I can’t front: I’m still utterly fascinated to see where things go from here.