Spoiler Alert (2022 | USA | 112 minutes | Michael Showalter)
Michael Showalter’s Spoiler Alert is a feat of filmmaking. It’s a melodrama starring the actor responsible for one of the most cloying TV characters in my lifetime, and it operates in a genre prone to audience manipulation and overwhelming sentimentality, and it offers few (if any) surprises. Yet, somehow, I actually really, really enjoyed it. Spoiler Alert is basically the Citizen Kane of terminal-illness dramedies.
Adapted from the memoir Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies by TV journalist Michael Ausiello, this movie is a love story affected by terminal cancer. Jim Parsons plays Ausiello, an awkward and introverted Smurfs fanatic who meets the man of his dreams at a nightclub during “jock night.” Kit (Ben Aldridge) is good-looking, magnetic, and confident. It’s a nice meet cute with Kit’s best gal pal Nina (Nikki M. James) drunkenly declaring that Michael is Kit’s type. He’s “a tall dweeb” she says more than once.
Aldridge and Parsons have such a natural chemistry that helps the movie power through all of the obligatory cliches. They are both sensitive and vulnerable in different ways but the dialogue when they’re trying to be flirty or jocular feels genuine. Fortunately Jim Parsons abandoned all of his Sheldon Cooper idiosyncrasies and portrayed a character that is sweet and romantic and likable. I’m not sure how much that is reflected in the real-life Michael Ausiello but I enjoyed the warmth he exuded in a character that is supposed to be the more uptight of the pair.
The movie doesn’t veer far off the path other terminal illness films have forged already and almost like clockwork you can predict what is happening next. When we get to the inevitable (uhh, spoiler alert, Kit is diagnosed with rectal cancer) I felt invested in the story because of the credibility the movie earned during the first half. On my way in, attendees were given Spoiler Alert-branded facial tissues that I definitely ripped into. I was such a blubbering mess to the point I was in no condition to give the expected feedback after the press screening I attended.
This isn’t to say that the movie is perfect. Telling Michael’s childhood story through a 1980’s sitcom isn’t a choice I would make, but the movie hit me unexpectedly. I ended up loving this movie and it defied my expectations of what I thought this movie could be.
Spoiler Alert is in theaters now.