REVIEW: ‘Erin’s Guid To Kissing Girls’ Is A Sweet Middle-Grade Rom-Com

Writer and Director Julianna Notten crafts a sweet start to rom-com season with the feature-length version of her film Erin’s Guide to Kissing Girls, a middle-grade story featuring Elliot Stocking‘s titular Erin, one of probably very few out lesbians in her middle school class as she navigates her best friend Liz (Jesyca Gu) possibly going to a different school next year and a growing crush on new girl and former child star Sydni (Rosali Annikie).

There’s no easier way to put it: Erin’s Guide to Kissing Girls is a sweet 90-minute rom-com for all ages. Specifically, it is the kind of movie where teenagers struggle to communicate honestly and clearly with one another, so all of the tension and drama are built on this lack of communication. It’s a juvenile format and doesn’t set the film out of the ordinary, but it services the kind of teenage drama at hand and doesn’t get in the way of making a movie with nice moments and endearing dynamics.

Erin is a bit of a stereotypical queer kid on the surface, and I’m not always completely convinced that she’s actually a Zoomer the way some of her lines are written, but Stocking is on point in her depiction of middle school-aged crushing and best friend tiffing. She has this way of getting wound up really tight over the things making her nervous, despite being an obviously self-confident person when it’s just her and Liz. Liz is a great foil for Erin because while they share a lot in common superficially, like their love for comic books, her personality is the inverse of Erin’s. She’s a quieter, athletic kid compared to Liz’s more gregarious, creative, nerdy type. You buy them as best friends but their big differences in personality also help make them both feel less like caricatures or stereotypes.

Then comes the romance of it all. I think the outcome of the story is telegraphed from a mile away, and I don’t know how much I love the outcome once it arrives. It’s a big ‘ol movie about how communication is key after all and will save everyone the strife of heartbreak and broken friendships. I just always find with these kinds of stories that I wish they’d tackle miscommunication more expediently and let the story get to something more interesting instead of needing to ride on it the whole way through.

What I love most about Erin’s Guide to Kissing Girls though is that the romance of it is what I remember the least. What I really remember is the way that having a crush led Erin to learn a whole lot about herself and how she wants to go on existing in the world. And I remember how Erin and Liz’s friendship drives them both to realize that perhaps they shouldn’t be trying too hard to plan for the future and might be better served not letting high school pass them by too fast. The movie ends on truly the most perfect note possible, inverting the whole movie’s plot in an instant. For as much as I wish that there were different notes the movie could have hit along the way, the ending wouldn’t have hit as perfectly had the rest of the movie gone any differently until then.

While Erin’s Guide to Kissing Girls’ central lesson is a bit overlearned, its incidentals are great and its last-minute final message is excellent. Where it falls into a few overly familiar queer love story beats, it also throws several others away by turning mean girls into the butts of their own jokes and keeps the queer characters distinct. It’s a solid middle-grade affair and ought to be enjoyed by queer romance enjoyers of all ages.

Erin’s Guide to Kissing Girls is available now on VOD.