Rahul Desai
Everyone is the protagonist of this seven-episode series set in an elite girls’ boarding school. No less than seven teenagers radiate main-character energy. On paper, having multiple protagonists – basically, having none at all – is a fancy idea.
Girlhood is not a character or a phase but a tagline here. The young-adult genre can be a lot of things: Sweet, plasticky, fun, flimsy. But it has no business being so distant.
The young actors share a natural relationship with the camera. Each of them is sharp and perceptive; their dialogue delivery and facial expressions are calibrated to fit the whims of everyday energy.
Unfortunately, The problem is in the writing of these characters and their tropey chemistry. They unfold like derivative and quasi-hipster people who’ve watched many high-school dramedies.
It's a show that goes everywhere and nowhere at once. It’s a shapeless puddle of cutesy coming-of-age vignettes, where narrative batons aren’t passed so much as snatched and dropped.
Much of Big Girls Don’t Cry is stuck in that void between coolth and commentary. It is also inexplicably repetitive, which might be rationalized as a reflection of lost girls on the brink of adulthood. Its narrative generosity conceals something duller and sillier.