CRSHD

Set on the last night of her Freshman year at Oberlin (which isn’t named, but if you’ve ever heard of the school, watched Girls or met approximately 75% of Brooklyn, you know that’s what school it is), Izzy Alden (Isabelle Barbier) is freaking out. She and one of her college best friends, Fiona Newman (Sadie Scott), made a pact that the two of them would lose their virginity by the end of their freshman year. Fiona had already made it happen, but Izzy had definitely not. She’s a frenzy of hormones, which we are shown through some pretty hilarious daydream sequences, but in reality, Izzy can’t seem to stop being awkward long enough to “seal the deal.”

Izzy’s other best friend, Anuka Deshpande (Deeksha Ketkar), doesn’t know that Izzy is a virgin, and thinks that she lost her virginity to a guy named Travis from her hometown. So Anuka doesn’t understand the frantic nature of their final day of school or Izzy and Fiona’s obsession with attending a big “CRUSH” party at a house off campus called “Big Blue.” What is a Crush party, you may ask? I’ll fill you in because I had no idea these were even things until I saw this movie. Apparently, someone writes their crush’s name down and takes it to the house, and all of the people who were “Crushed” get invited to the party. No one else is allowed to come.

“Little does Izzy know that her astronomy classmate, Oliver…has a crush on her…”

Izzy has her biggest personal crush on a guy named Nolan (Abdul Seidu), but she’s not sure if he even knows she exists. He’s very cool and in a band with Fiona’s crush, Elise. Little does Izzy know that her astronomy classmate, Oliver (Raph Fineberg) has a crush on her and is how she ends up getting invited to the Crush party. An expected amount of hijinks ensue.

As outdated as “losing my virginity” comedies may seem in 2019, it is a little different when shown from a female perspective. Thusly, the topic seems fresh. It also doesn’t hurt that all of the women in this movie have agency over their sexuality and they aren’t judged for what they have or have not done sexually. That being said, the film does have it’s fair share of tropes from the John Hughes/Judd Apatow/every-college-movie-ever depository. There are young kids stealing alcohol, a falling out between friends that’s solved right before the credits roll, etc. However, none of these are unforgivable or too eye roll worthy.

Mostly I can say that CRSHD is a great teen-centric film for whatever we’re calling the current generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings…post-millennials? Generation Z? Whatever. This movie is made for them by one of them, and they will love it. There are some really cool animated sequences that remind one of playing an old video game, and some very interesting techniques used to convey the contents of a group chat. This film is very much of our current era, but you can even be *gasp* over 30 and enjoy CRSHD, even if it is a little reminiscent of a lot of the college movies that came before it.