Watch 'Banana Split' now hurry up you're taking too long

Vertical Entertainment

Set “Frances Ha” at “Riverdale” and remove all the villains and -- you know what, forget the comparisons. Just stream “Banana Split” on Netflix and let this coming-of-age/break-up/friendship movie offer more laughs and emotion than you expect to get from most high school romantic comedies. Much less one that can do it in under 80 minutes.

The premise screams contrivance but not impossibility: April (co-writer Hannah Marks) is prepared to hate Clara (Liana Liberato, apparently Marks’ friend in reality), the girl now featured on her ex-boyfriend Nick’s (Dylan Sprouse) Instagram, until they click over rap lyrics and a genuine kindness where stereotypical animosity was expected. (Though pre-bonding April gets in a good line when Clara attempts a feeble icebreaker about looking for her keys, responding, “It’s still icy as fuck in here.”) This turns their L.A. summer, the last before April heads to Boston for college, into an unusual love triangle in which the girls keep their friendship secret -- also creating an awkward position for Ben (Luke Spencer Roberts), Nick’s best friend and a longtime family friend of Clara’s -- and rules about conversation topics to avoid can only last as long as the emotional states of 18-year-olds remain static.

Roll your eyes if you want, then watch as “Banana Split,” Marks’ hilarious script (favorite line: “I am going to tell weird stories at your funeral so no one remembers you accurately”) and the uniformly charming performances roll them back. This is a movie that understands the wide spectrum of friendship commitments and the messiness of untying anything that once felt firmly knotted. Marks and Liberato’s chemistry is close to “Booksmart” levels, driven by a great, sincere sense of these characters. And it’s beyond that: First-time feature director Benjamin Kasulke provides considerable style that never dominates the material, creating an epic montage from the lifespan of April and Nick’s relationship among many other choices that make a moment out of something that might have just been a scene.

And even if the plot could use a little more -- more originality, more incidents, more consideration of the deceptions at play -- “Banana Split” has such a likable, light touch that its portrait of non-binary feelings toward moving on becomes unexpectedly affecting. So, so often the onscreen romantic enemy is too perfect or too awful or flawed in some kind of forced way. “Banana Split” dares to create people you want to hang out with, give them complicated motivations and see which relationships are left standing at the end. For a movie about intangible connections and uncomfortable texts and failed driver’s tests, that’s underrated ambitious, and fun as hell.

B+

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