By Ekene Osuchukwu

The Netflix original teenage comedy Sierra Burgess Is a Loser takes catfishing to extreme and uncomfortable places while touching on the topic of self-acceptance.

The definition of a catfish is someone who pretends to be someone else online which is becoming easier through the internet. At first what seems to be a dull high school movie turns into a surprising series of events that center around Sierra Burgess (Shannon Purser) and her love life—well technically someone else´s love life.

Sierra is Hollywood’s stereotypical nerd who is an overweight, straight-A student and member of the marching band. But her size and intelligence are the last things I am thinking about when I say that Sierra Burgess IS a loser.

The mean head cheerleader Veronica (Kristine Froseth) gives Sierra´s number to a nervous Jamey (Noah Centineo) as a prank, and when Jamey texts who he thinks is Veronica, Sierra answers and continues to text him even though she is not who he thinks she is. Any normal person would have stopped texting A STRANGER as soon as they discovered they had the wrong number, but as we see in the movie Sierra Burgess is far from normal.

After a few days, she finds herself starting to like Jamey, but the only problem is their entire ¨relationship¨ is built on a lie. Instead of coming clean about her identity, Sierra decides to keep the persona going because she doesn’t have ¨the look¨ that average, hormonal, teenage boys seek. This in itself gives viewers a message further away from the idea of body positivity. As a result, she teams up with the high school mean girl, Veronica, in desperate hopes of keeping up her relationship with Jamey. And at this point in the movie, it becomes obvious that Sierra Burgess really is a loser.

Along with the new-found friendship of Sierra and Veronica, comes one of the most controversial scenes in the movie —the kissing scene. I won’t give it away, but it is a hot topic and uncomfortable to say the least.

The sudden rise in media coverage for the movie, if we are being honest, has little to do with the movie itself and more to do with Hollywood’s hot, new boyfriend Noah Centineo. Centineo was recently in another Netflix original, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, where I fell in love with everything from his voice to his character’s name, Peter Kavinsky. But as much as I love Centineo, he and the other cast members were not as dynamic as I would have liked.

Although I did like the story, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser is a cliché high school movie and illustrated the prototype catfish. The film was more creepy than romantic and received a lot of backlash for the poor execution of the message ¨everyone is beautiful.¨