Review

'Emo the Musical': A Big Australian Why

Think of the worst idea you’ve ever had.

Was it climbing a tall tree? Maybe overdrawing your account? Applying for a job too late?

Whatever it was, it’s not as a bad as "Emo the Musical."

“But Bethany,” you say with such naivety, “How could a musical about a subculture of people who are obsessed with death not work? There’s a musical about the Addams Family.”

And lo' I believed the same; I was in fact a very watered-down emo in the days of my youth. Lo’ black eyeliner and skull printed t-shirts’ memories will never be put in their graves.

I wanted so much more, so many red lights and screams of terror, "My Chemical Romance" constantly playing in the background.

That did not happen.

Here’s what did happen, with heavy spoilers as per the usual.

There’s this sad, drowned rat of an Australian boy who is 0/10 not a babe. I’m not going to say he looks like he smells like mildew and stale fries, but if there was a type of person to smell like mildew and stale fries, it would be this dude. He goes to a super fancy rich kid school and is like, “bluh I have no friends”.

Everyone basically hates him at his school, so he decides to hang himself on the front lawn.

You know, where people can’t see him and stop him from hanging himself and dying.

On the front lawn.

Across from a bunch of obvious windows, where kids can see.

So being good stock characters that we never see, his parents transfer him to what I can only call hell on earth. So, this stupid school.

This stupid school.

Dear god, this stupid, stupid, stupid school.

There’s only two types of people at this nuclear fallout area of a school: religious zealots and emo hell kids. The emo hell kids rule the school for reasons unknown, while the religious zealots rule academics and being happy, pregnant and gay.

Ya’ll starting to see what I’m putting down?

It’s like high school musical if high school musical had the budget of a broken-down burger king.

Anyway, so the dude, Ethan, sees that there is a friendly, neighborhood emo band at this school. A super-kinda-locally-I-guess-famous band for other kids who enjoy black eyeliner and stuff.  He is extremely excited about this.

So, he goes up to his fellow emos and is like, “Can I please join yer band mate?”

And the band is like, “I dunno mate, are ye emo?”

And the guy basically says something that is  along the lines of, “Life is meaningless, and I also totally tried to hang myself on this totally visible tree outside the totally sad school.” He also smashes the drums and shreds the guitar in a really artistic way.

Which the band decides is metal as heck (it is not in fact metal. What is really metal is getting help if you need it).

And so, they let their new mate into the band.

New mate goes into the hallway to get ready to leave the school and sees this totally hot, totally not weird girl singing.

And he’s like, “Wow."

And she’s like, “Come to church with me.”

And he’s like, “Wow, no.”

But they’ve already made eye contact so of course he’s destined to date this chick. And she is a whack job.

I’m gonna be real with you. I’m not a religious person, so  my bench mark for too religious is at an average height. Like praying before meals and stuff, awesome. Verbally abusing gay people and disrespecting unmarried pregnant people? Not cool. No fish on Friday? Fine, cool, whatevs. Staging a crucifixion in your backyard? Ya’ll might wanna think about your life.

And this chick is scary...

While he’s got this main girl who is a cool emo/the best singer in this ungodly movie, this Christian chick is all up on him and being really kind of disrespectful to awesome emo girl?

And she just keeps trying, so hard, so very hard, to convert someone who is not about that Jesus life. They go to her room at one point and she admits to him the, “Biggest religious revelation of my life.” She really liked this dude and he was unbaptized, so, you know, without his permission…

She held him underwater in a pool and baptized him right there.

Like, excuse me?

If any, and I mean any, of my friends held me underwater in a pool, they completely and utterly reserve the right to throw a punch. As an unbaptized person it’s a right you should reserve to, you know, not be forcibly baptized?

Emo dude is like, “Uh, wow, that’s really weird, but your lips are soft, so I guess cool? I don’t know though, like what?”

And she’s like, “Well nice time converting—conversing with you. See you, ha ha, take this bible that my parents bought me and find the way to our lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

And he takes the bible and later burns it with the encouragement of the emos (Who are preparing for a competition to be the most emo band ever, but main guy doesn’t really care that much.)

The emos are all like, “You can’t hang out with that girl, she’s totally making you cheat on someone which is horrible. Also she’s literally singing a song about how Jesus would probably be an emo.”

He responds with, “Yeah I kinda see that.”

The emos ask him to take his burnt bible back to this girl, but lo’, a plot twist. She answers the door in her swimsuit. She starts dragging him into the backyard and is like, “Come swim with me.”

Sirens are going off in everyone’s head except the dude’s. The camera zooms in on her face as he sits. He notices the holy water tubs left conveniently out in the open. A serene smile spreads across her face.

“I have to go,” he says.

And this crazy girl tries to basically WWE his face into the water?!

Also, there’s a subplot about pharmaceuticals sponsoring the school and forcing everyone to take happy pills. Antidepressants aren’t bad or anything, but they shouldn’t be handed out like you’re at a Fourth of July parade.

This subplot fades in and out of relevancy throughout the movie.

Ethan screwed up and burnt part of the school on purpose, so they got bribed for it. Then his friends outed a Christian gay dude to his band. Then his band sent him to the conversion camp because these people are horrible people!

The Christian band is down one background guitarist. You know, because they thought it was cool to send someone off to a special camp for making his life horrible.

Ethan somehow decides that these horrible people need a break and therefore puts his heart and soul into playing for the Christian band. Mostly because he still thinks that scary Jesus lady who tried to forcibly baptize him is hot.

Someone pulls a knife, there’s a lot of drama, a Christian girl is pregnant and they act like she might be the virgin Mary (when it turns out to be a Christian dude who made her pregnant).

And this movie just sucks.

I was excited about the musical portion, but legit every song is either a rip off of "Twenty-One Guns" by Green Day or "American Idiot" (also by Green Day).

This is literally the worst movie I’ve ever seen.  At one point they start having a freakoutfest because this boy didn’t really try to hang himself on the front lawn (surprise), and they are mad that he did not have a "real" suicide attempt.

Everyone is horrible, and every character is a horrible stereotype.

This movie gets no guns out of Twenty-One.