Here’s an exceptionally mild-mannered Netflix teen romance built around a couple of cute young leads made “stars” by earlier Netflix outings.
Peyton List (“Kobra Kai”) plays a flapper teen who swipes a magic ring and dies in 1928, only to come back and haunt a teen (Michael Cimino of “Never Have I Ever”) who finds that same ring in the present day.
It’s sweet enough and harmless enough for tweens, with tragedy and almost wrestling with death and the way life “moves on” from it, but kind of chickening out on that. It’s not remotely edgy enough for your average teenage streaming consumer, or anybody older.
Bea has the flapper haircut the flapper hat and the sassy, rebellious air of a 1928 city teen who wanders off from a museum tour in Spectral Valley, USA, only to find a pair of ancient “lovers’ rings” and make off with one.
Next thing she knows, she’s hit by a car. Possibly a Dusenberg.
Cole is a kid who moved to Spectral Valley with his mom (Andrea Navedo) for a fresh start. Moving into an enormous, nicely-restored turn of the last century Queen Anne house could make that easier.
But Cole, a guitarist who hasn’t played since his beloved guitar-mentor Dad passed, stumbles across a hidden compartment in his closet with a photo album suggesting a young life interrupted long ago. A ring stashed there confirms it.
Because lonely loner Cole puts the ring on, and damned if this flapper Bea doesn’t appear. Cole might recognize her as such since he’s studying “The Great Gatsby” in school.
Bea is a font of “Doozy” and “bees knees” slang, lost in a world of “selfies” and social media and the like. There’s a real pop culture communication barrier, even after Bea learns how long she’s been dead and just how much the world changed.
Youtube tutorials bring her up to speed. No, Cole doesn’t have the heart to tell her what happened to Amelia Earhart. No, she can’t “leave this house,” until magically, as if the screenwriter sensed the need to change scenery, she can.
List is an engaging presence, even if her character here has no edge. Jazz baby flappers typically liked jazz, illegal booze, smoking and the company of jazz baby men. Even her “stealing” is played as “sweet.” Cimino’s take on the brooding Cole is as watered-down as everything else here.
The most interesting character here is Lydia, that one kid in every high school (movie) who can sense the dead and is totally cool when they manifest in front of her. She’s given a nice spark by Phoebe Holden.
The cast also includes Brandon Michael Hall as a curiously ineffectual literature teacher who can’t get his kids to grasp the book “starring Leonardo DiCaprio,” “The Great Gatsby.” Judging from the interpretations laid out here, the screenwriter doesn’t “get” “Gatsby” either.
But events conspire to point Bea and Cole to some sort of “closure” and reconcilliation with death, even if their chaste attraction suggests they shouldn’t.
“Girl Haunts Boy” is unchallenging all around. But for kids too young to be studying “The Great Gatsby,” it could be “the bees knees,” or “chill” or whatever replaces “cool” this week.
Rating: PG
Cast: Peyton List, Michael Cimino and Phoebe Holden
Credits: Directed by Emily Ting, scripted by Cesar Vitale. Netflix release.
Running time: 1:40
