In the #1 New York Times bestselling book The Sun Is Also A Star, we meet Natasha and Daniel and experience their whirlwind romance as they explore New York City. Natasha is desperate to stop her family’s deportation back to Jamaica, and Daniel is a secret romantic and poet following his Koren-native parents’ dreams for him to be a doctor. When they find each other, is it pure luck, or does the universe have something special in store?
I devoured this book in one day and was so excited to see the movie adaptation starring Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton. This is one of those books that seems like it would transition easily into a movie, and so I had high hopes. Unfortunately, the movie made some odd choices and didn’t quite capture the magic that the book held. It was still enjoyable, but let’s look at what the core of the book was and how the movie attempted to recreate it.
A teenage love story
At its heart, The Sun Is Also A Star is a young adult romance, about two teenagers falling love in the span of one day. Naturally the movie kept this as the plot: Natasha likes to keep her feet firmly on the ground and doesn’t believe in love, while Daniel is a poet who believes love is the greatest force in the universe. When Daniel dares Natasha to let him convince her he’s right, she reluctantly agrees, and—shocker—by the end of the day, they’re head over heels for each other.
In the book, the beginning of their relationship is given a little more time to grow; Daniel uses the 36 questions that are “scientifically proven” to make two people fall in love [LINK] and the two get to know each other, until Natasha is almost surprised by how much she cares for him. In the movie, we don’t see as much of this early stage. Daniel does bring up the 36 questions, but only asks her one or two. The conversation when they talk about their complicated relationships with their fathers is cut completely, as is one of the big reasons for Natasha’s wariness about love: her last boyfriend cheated on her for most of their relationship. Without these key points, their relationship felt stilted and awkward. Jokes that were heartwarming in the book fell flat in the movie.
Even the “one day” aspect is discarded, as Natasha and Daniel end up sleeping in Central Park and return to her family’s apartment together in the morning—which, by the way, what teenager just doesn’t come home for the night and doesn’t let her family know?? Maybe it’s because I’m not a teenager anymore, but this part bothered me more than it seemed to bother any of the characters!
Other Shelf to Screen Reviews
Dumplin’
Crazy Rich Asians
A look at how everything that happens to us is part of a chain reaction
A key theme in the book is how everything is connected through a chain reaction. Each of the characters—not just Natasha and Daniel—play a part in a series of events, whether it’s the security guard who takes too long letting Natasha into immigration services or the train conductor who makes an announcement to the train Daniel is on about his newfound faith to the driver of the BMW who almost hits Natasha, but does hit the immigration lawyer Natasha needs to meet with and Daniel has an alumni interview with. It would take way too long to lay out every connection, but the book is not just told from Daniel and Natasha’s perspective—it has chapters about all of these minor characters, so that we see what events in their lives made them who they are today, which ultimately leads to Natasha and Daniel meeting and falling in love.
I understand this is a hard aspect to retain in a movie. They do the best they can with it—we see that Daniel is attentive to “signs,” which is what causes him to try and meet Natasha and ultimately save her life. The lawyer lays it out plainly at the end—the BMW that Daniel saved Natasha from walking in front of ended up clipping his bike, but he ended up marrying his doctor he met at the hospital. So it does have that “everything happens for a reason” vibe, but it just isn’t able to explore it as much as the book does.
A love letter to New York City
Since the entire story takes place in NYC, it ends up being a love letter of sorts to the city. The movie did capture this perfectly—we see beautiful shots of the skyline, the hustle of the streets, and the numerous cultures that collide in the city. The camera work was also unique in that during establishing shots of the city, it often rotated, as if reminding the viewer that we live on a planet that is hurtling and rotating through space, which aligns with Natasha’s interest in astronomy and the title of the book and movie.
Final thoughts: Category Three
I honestly expected this to be in Category Two, where it interprets the book so well, you could probably get away with not reading it and just watching the movie. But since Natasha and Daniel’s relationship feels a bit awkward in the movie, I would still recommend reading the book to get the full experience, both of their relationship and the zoomed-out view of the other characters as we see that everything is connected.
Have you read The Sun Is Also A Star or seen the movie? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!
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