Rising stars Samuel Bottomley and Callum Scott Howells play former best friends working through an estrangement — and a cancer diagnosis — in Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey's likable debut.
By Guy Lodge
Plus IconGuy Lodge
Film Critic
@guylodge See All
Courtesy of Circus Studios The weather being what it is in Yorkshire, a sunroof is not a top priority for most car buyers in that English county — but the tired hatchback driven by young slacker Frankie (Samuel Bottomley) has one. That’s the first of a few improbabilities in “The State of Us,” an occasionally hokey but winningly sweet-natured buddy comedy from British newcomer Ollie Gardner and Jake Harvey, and it’s a forgivable one: How else, at a key emotional juncture, will his ailing best friend Taylor (Callum Scott Howells) stand up in the car to freely embrace the cold night with arms outstretched? It’s a shameless cliché of an image, recycled from the likes of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and TV’s “Euphoria,” but the film gets away with the steal, in large part because Frankie and Taylor are, at least for a moment, chasing the life they’ve seen in slicker American youth movies.
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