5 things to know about 'The Hate U Give', the adaptation of Angie Thomas' bestselling YA novel
Less than two years after Angie Thomas' novel The Hate U Give took the book publishing world by storm, it's made the leap to the big screen.
Directed by George Tillman Jr., the movie, like the book, centers on Starr Carter (Amandla Stenberg), a teenage girl from the poor black neighborhood of Garden Heights, who attends a private school in the wealthy white neighborhood of Williamson.
It's a bifurcated life, but a mostly manageable one for Starr – until the night she witnesses the murder of her childhood friend at the hands of a police officer.
The relevance of Starr’s story hardly needs to be explained – but what makes it worth watching is its memorable characters, fine cast, and generous spirit. Here’s everything you need to know about the new movie based on arguably the buzziest YA novel of the past few years.
1. It feels like a book adaptation, for better or for worse
If you've read the book, you'd probably like to know whether the adaptation is worthy of the source material. I'll confess I can't say, as I haven't.
But by all accounts, it's a faithful telling – perhaps even, on occasion, too faithful. The Hate U Give feels very much like a movie based on a book, relying on Starr's voiceover narration to tell rather than show us some crucial details. At one point, Starr picks up an object and mentally compares its weight to that of a gun; it's a great line, but it sounds like something from the book that was too precious to cut.
2. Amandla Stenberg is a fantastic lead
That said, there are reasons to watch the movie even if you’ve read the book and know the story, and chief among them is its star(r).
Stenberg is riveting from moment one. Starr is a character playing a character – as she explains in voiceover, she code-switches between "Starr Version 1" with her family and community in Garden Heights, and "Starr Version 2" with they's classmates in Williamson – but Stenberg's bright, expressive eyes keep us in tune with the "real" Starr at all times.
3. Starr’s family is everything
Undoubtedly, Stenberg also benefits from the rock-solid cast around them. Starr's family is a tight-knit one, and that means lots of screen time for her parents, Lisa (Regina Hall) and Maverick (Russell Hornsby), and her brothers, Seven (Lamar Johnson) and Sekani (TJ Wright).
Mom and dad, who had Starr when they were just teenagers, are so cute together that their daughter refers to them as her OTP (one true pairing). But The Hate U Give doesn't just put them out there as some idealized fantasy – you see the everyday work they've put into making this family strong.
They talk. They negotiate. They tell their kids the important stuff, even when it's difficult (one of the first scenes has Maverick teaching his children exactly what to do if they're ever pulled over by the cops), and they're there for Starr and her brothers come hell or high water, even when they're scared or uncertain. They're a huge part of what makes The Hate U Give feel so special and so compulsively watchable.
4. It's a weighty drama that makes room for joy
And in a movie that deals with cycles of violence, poverty, and crime, the Carters serve as a reminder that love and joy can be passed around within families and communities, too. The Hate U Give has an inherently tragic premise, and yet – unlike so many dramas trying to reckon with heavy issues – it remembers to make room for moments of humor, happiness, and heart.
There are jokes. There are moments of celebration. There are cute boys to swoon over (KJ Apa of Riverdale plays Starr's sweet but oblivious boyfriend, Chris), meals to enjoy, and parties to attend. Some of these moments are broken up by bursts of tragedy or violence, because that's just the harsh reality of life, particularly for a black person in America. But The Hate U Give never loses sight of what makes the tough stuff worth enduring.
5. The personal is the political
The Hate U Give has so much on its mind, from microaggressions to police brutality to the perils of protest. Yet it never feels preachy or didactic, because it stays so laser-focused on Starr. The film simply takes as fact that the political and the personal are inextricably intertwined.
The film has no appetite for easy moralizing or simplistic answers, because it's far more interested in showing us how these issues look when they're refracted through real people and real experiences. (Or at least, people and experiences so specifically rendered and lovingly performed that they feel real.)
By the time Starr figures out how to speak out, we don't need to be convinced. We've already seen this whole messy, ugly, beautiful world through her eyes, and we already know the power a single voice can yield.
