The Sun Is Also a Star: a charming, if generic, adolescent love story

The Sun Is Also a Star is a 2019 American teen drama film directed by Ry Russo-Young and written by Tracy Oliver, based on the young adult novel of the same name by Nicola Yoon. The film stars Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton, and follows a young couple who fall in love, while one of their families faces deportation. Natasha is a girl who believes in science and facts.

Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. She is not the type of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when her family is twelve hours away from being deported. Falling in love with him will not be her story. Daniel has always been the good son, the good student, living up to his parents’ high expectations. Never a poet. Or a dreamer.

But when he sees her, he forgets all that. Something about Natasha makes him think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store - for both of them. Every moment has brought them to this single moment. A million futures lie before them. . On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 52% based on 79 reviews, with an average rating of 5.66/10.

The website’s critical consensus reads: “The Sun Is Also a Star has a pair of easy-to-love leads, but tests the audience’s affection with a storyline that strains credulity past the breaking point.” On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 52 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews.” Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of “B–” on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars.