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Sierra Burgess is a Loser

This past year a lot of eye catching movies made it to the big screen, one that particularly stood out
to me was Sierra Burgess is a Loser. It's supposed to be a coming-of-age romantic drama / comedy, but it's
terrible at being any of those things. It has one of the most ridiculous plots, unsympathetic protagonists and
self contradictory messages I've seen in a long time. I discovered this film through a friend.
Sierra Burgess is our protagonist. This is who we were supposed to identify with and feel sympathy
for, except she doesn't have any problems that couldn't be solved with regular exercise proper diet and some
willpower. In the cruel hierarchy of the American high school she is a loser and boys ignore her to the extent
that she's often the target of some sort of joke. The whole point of the film is that she's got below average
looks. Her dad's a famous poet who's always quoting other people's poetry. Her mom's some kind of
motivational speaker.
When she gets to school Sierra puts up a poster for her tutoring job. She has to write a poem but feels
like she's living under her father's shadow and her teacher doesn’t help: ”You're gonna
outshine all the other poems in the class. It's in your blood.”. She then has a run-in with the popular girl,
Veronica and they have a battle of wits. Later Sierra has a meeting about college applications with a woman
who doesn’t care at all about her future. Even though she speaks three and a half languages and has near-
perfect grades she's told that she's boring and completely overshadowed by her famous father and needs to
do a lot more to get accepted into her choice of college.
Meanwhile Veronica and her friends get approached by Jamie, our love interest, and he asks for
Veronica’s phone number. Veronica gives him Sierra's number that she ripped off her poster earlier. That’s
how Sierra gets a text from Jamie rather than immediately tell him that he has the wrong number she
obsesses over the picture he sends her and she shows the first signs of being completely delusional: ”I met a
guy. Okay, not met-met. We texted. All night. By mistake. He may or may not think that I'm somebody
else.”. Her friend Dan is one of the only sensible people in this film. He basically exists in order to say the
things that every sane person will be shouting at the screen: ”There's a word for that. Catfishing. I'm pretty
sure it's illegal.”.
Veronica is sad because she got dumped by her college-age boyfriend, Spence, apparently
for not being smart enough. Sierra offers to tutor Veronica so she can win him back. In exchange Veronica
has to lend her face to Sierra's conversations with Jamie. Sierra finds out Veronica’s home life isn’t great.
The mother is obsessed with pretending that the father is dead when he's not. Veronica doesn’t understand so
she gets upset and storms off to her room to cry. She decides that this would be a perfectly good time to send
Jamie a picture, even though she it is clear she's just been crying.
The next hole in Sierra's plan becomes apparent when Jamie wants to talk over the phone. He
notices her voice is different so she makes up an excuse about having a cold.
In order to make her college application more interesting she decides to try out for the boy’s running
team. Since she never run in her life the results are predictable and she gets sick.
Another hole in the plan comes when Jamie wants to FaceTime after a fruitless attempt to teach
Veronica the basics of Nietzsche. Sierra uses her like a puppet in order to video call Jamie. Her plan is to
drag out this charade for as long as possible, because she likes the attention. Jamie then asks Sierra on a date.
She convinced Veronica to go on the date even though that's a terrible idea.
Later Sierra sees Jamie playing with his little brother and wants to talk to him but is afraid that he'd
recognize her voice. Dan tries to pass her off as being deaf and she goes along with it. Jamie knows sign
language because his little brother is in fact deaf and is confused by her. Dan insists that she tells him the
truth, she promises she will and then of course she doesn't.
Sierra follows Jamie and Veronica on their date. After the movie they have this awkward
conversation where Sierra texts Veronica what she wants her to say. Jamie tries to kiss Veronica and Sierra
grabs Veronica's legs so she screams. She makes him close his eyes and then Sierra kisses him.
 Veronica takes Sierra to a party because her friends abandoned her. Here we find out that Veronica’s
ex-boyfrien is a horrible person. After the party Sierra drunk dials Jaime but she still doesn't tell him the
truth.
Because Sierra's been obsessing over her Romeo she forgot to do her poetry assignment and her best
friend. Dan's annoyed that she chose to go to the party instead of spending time with him. She does that
again to be with Veronica because Spence broke up with her again.
At the next football game Jamie runs into Veronica and kisses her. Sierra sees this and gets jealous
and angry. She hacks into Veronica's Instagram and then sends the selfie that Spence took earlier to all of
Veronica's followers which then gets uploaded to the main screen. The truth comes out and Jamie is
understandably confused and a bit pissed. Sierra then takes it out on her parents and blames her behavior on
her being fat and ugly.
She tries to resolve the situation by writing a song. It's nothing special, nothing you wouldn't hear
down a local open mic night but it somehow miraculously solves most of her problems. Her teacher accepts
the song as the poetry assignment and writes for her a glowing recommendation for Stanford. Veronica
listens to the song and so forgives her while also finding the motivation to tell her mom to shut up and stop
living in the past. Veronica then plays Jamie the song so he shows up at Sierra's house and forgives her:
”Look, Sierra, what you did was terrible. I mean, bad, like, really bad,and...I get why you did it, I do,
and...honestly, had we not met the way that we had,maybe I wouldn't have noticed you.I mean, you're not
exactly everybody's type. But...you're my type. You are exactly my type. I mean, you're smart and funny and
beautiful and talented.I haven't been that impressed by a voice on someone who's not famous ever, like, ever.
For the record,I think that roses are more like...the bitchy supermodels of flowers.”.
I actually feel sorry for Veronica although she was complicit in the scheme.
Her mum’s manipulative and overbearing, her sisters are brats her friends are bad people and she's had so
much pressure on her to fulfill a certain role and now that's all fallen apart because of something that Sierra
brought her into. At least she actually has an interesting character arc and grows immensely as a person. The
film should have been about her and not Sierra.
The movie completely contradicted whatever positive impact and coming-of-age theme it might have
had. Sierra catfished him but it's all okay because she wrote a song and somehow convinced him to accept
her for her personality even though her personality is horrible: she manipulated him, walked all over her
friends and publicly humiliated someone.
To top it all off it ends with a ridiculous ”where are they now”:Sierra gets into Stanford with her
straight A's even though the teacher earlier said that that wasn't good enough and basically everyone's happy
and lovey-dovey and having a great time. The target audience for this film is teenage girls and teenage girls
are impressionable and some of them are going to believe that it's perfectly acceptable to treat boys this way
because if he's truly a good person he'll forgive them.
In conclusion, this movie is a waste of time and sends a horrible message to everyone.