Now streaming on:
There are moments in adolescence when your feelings about romance turn on a dime. Maybe it s hormonal. The girl you thought was a pest becomes the object of your dreams. The boy you ve had a crush on for years begins to seem like a jerk. The timing is off. Sometimes you can look back half a lifetime and see how things might have happened differently if you hadn t been so stupid. Rob Reiner s Flipped does the looking.
Here is a lovely movie about a girl who has adored a boy ever since he moved into the neighborhood in the second grade. She even likes his smell, and it is true we cannot love someone who isn t aromatic to our hearts. All through grade school and into high school, she pursues him; they re like the runners in Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn” who pursue each other for eternity without ever drawing closer. In Reiner s film, they flip and start running in the other direction.