I regret to report that I was not as charmed by this movie as the rest of the world. I found the concept to be more sad than fun, and while I appreciate that the film does flirt with the possibility that it's sad - it does get quite dark even for a while in the middle, one of them even dies!!! - it ends so happily and with virtually nobody learning anything at all from the experience, I have to conclude the film thinks ultimately it's cool. Especially when the teacher gave the kid booze and encouraged him to drink as a coping mechanism (and then we never saw any negative consequences with that), that's really when the movie just lost me for good.

(There's no way to talk with any substance about this movie without including the ending and the dead guy and that bit with the kid, so yeah I put the Spoilers tag on, although I'd also entertain the argument that this isn't the kind of movie that can get "spoiled".)

Look I'm no Puritan or prude. I enjoy a good drink and even a good drunk every once in a while. I agree that sometimes alcohol has the effect of loosening up one's inhibitions in ways that can be positive. I don't love that this movie's putting me in the position of arguing against alcohol consumption as a concept, because that's not where I'm at in life. But man it really turned me off. Feels like remaining agnostic at best regarding moral judgments on this "experiment" has potential to be actively harmful to people with addiction problems/tendencies. And I just did not experience the euphoria or weightless joy or whatever everyone else seems to have attained via that ending. It mostly just made me mad! And certainly made me want to drink less. Which I don't think is what it was going for?? I realized thanks to covid it's now been over a full year since I've been in a room full of drunk people and that is something I sure do not miss.

Weird subtitles in a style I've never seen on Hulu before - big enough to be intrusive to the image, and in Courier font?? Why