Five Feet Apart (2019) * 1/2

Directed by:  Justin Baldoni

Starring:  Haley Lu Richardson, Cole Sprouse, Moises Arias, Kimberly Hebert Gregory, Claire Forlani

Five Feet Apart wants to be a tearjerker romance about two people unfortunately stricken with cystic fibrosis (or some form thereof), but how am I supposed to care when I'm baffled by how absurd it is?
Stella (Richardson) and Will (Sprouse) are appealing enough, but how are they able to have virtually unfettered access to every square inch of the hospital where they are forced to stay?    The movie loses all credibility because the director wanted to continually find new places for these two to hold conversations.    It can't be good for your condition to be ultimately wandering around outside in the cold for miles on end.

Stella has had cystic fibrosis since birth.   She is once again hospitalized awaiting a lung transplant with no guarantee of success.    She sticks to her medication regimen and documents her fight against the disease on her YouTube channel.    Her best friend Po (Arias) is a sweet, frail guy who is also gay.   Brooding, pessimistic Will soon enters the hospital to undergo clinical trials for his more advanced disease which is even more contagious than cystic fibrosis.    The ward's attending nurse (Gregory) insists the two remain six feet apart at all times in order to lessen the chance of airborne contagions.    She apparently isn't as concerned with the two would-be lovers running all over the hospital unattended.   

They are at first combative, but soon fall in love and Stella takes a stand.    She wants the two to risk it all by remaining five feet apart at all times instead of six.    They take back a foot, as Stella puts it, and therefore they are saying f*** you to their circumstances.    Fair enough.    They walk around practically undisturbed in all areas of the hospital, even the roof.    They keep a pool cue between them to maintain their distance, physically if not emotionally, and I kept wondering where the pool cue came from.    Did Stella raid the doctor's lounge and steal it from a pool table, if there is one?

This hospital is a lawsuit waiting to happen.    They seem to have only a handful of staff, and in only one scene did I notice enough people in the hallway to cause Stella to bump into someone and say "excuse me".    This hospital knows how to stay out these kids' way, and apparently it isn't the least bit concerned of potential litigation for allowing these two to run amok.    These two talk on the roof, in the atrium, in the neonatal ward, you name it.    They even celebrate Will's 18th birthday by having a dinner party in the hospital's cafeteria after closing.    A nice meal is cooked up, but where do they get the food and champagne and candles?     Does someone smuggle in goods from the outside for these two?

There is also one scene in which Stella leads Will on a scavenger hunt of sorts by having him track down purple balloons she leaves everywhere for Will to find.   Each contains a handwritten note inside which serves as a clue to the location of the next balloon.    Did Stella, with her very limited ability to breathe, blow up the balloons by herself?    Did the staff help her inflate the balloons and place them strategically throughout the hospital?    Don't they have, you know, other patients to attend to?    By the evidence suggested, only Will, Stella, the newborns, and Po occupy the hospital.   Stella's and Will's families helpfully stay away enough so Stella and Will can carry on their courtship.

But this fairy tale can't last forever, and we know as certainly as night follows day that there will be a death or two to be contended with (I won't say who, but considering the limited number of characters it won't be hard to deduce), and then the two will actually have to deal with the limitations imposed by their diseases.    Until that point, their disease isn't really dealt with in any realistic way.   Aside from occasionally having to wear a surgical mask or oxygen hoses, the gravity of their diseases barely seems to stop them from doing anything, including swimming in the hospital pool.   Which can't be good for them, I would think, but caution be damned.

It is hard for me to take Five Feet Apart seriously.    It only deals with cystic fibrosis when it's convenient, or if the movie realizes they should pay some attention to it right about now.    More is said about the hell of cystic fibrosis than is actually shown.    There is no doubt how nightmarish such a disease is.    It makes every breath painful, and there is the possibility of any breath being your last as the bacteria destroys lung tissue.    In Five Feet Apart, that threat is discussed, but I was never convinced that Will or Stella were in any danger at all.    In a movie in which the characters have such awful prognoses, this is fatal to the story.