Everything, Everything

How can she ignore the boy next door? Well, she can’t. Never mind that 18-year-old Maddy Whittier (Amandla Stenberg) has been told by her protective mom (Anika Noni Rose) that she can never leave their hermetically sealed home because she’s been diagnosed with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID), a genetic condition that makes her “allergic to the world.” When Olly (Nick Robinson), a hunky teen with floppy hair, moves into the neighborhood with his dysfunctional family, the girl in the bubble is immediately smitten with the boy on the other side of her window — and, after a while, more than willing to risk infection for some interaction.

Such is the premise of “Everything, Everything,” the latest screen adaptation of a YA novel about young lovers who try to surmount apparently insurmountable obstacles in the way of what could be a tragically short happily ever after. For the first hour or so, it is unabashedly sappy yet modestly engaging, buoyed by the low-key charm of its two leads. But then an implausible third-act reveal spoils the fun, and the movie never recovers.

To her credit, director Stella Meghie devises imaginative visual stratagems during several scenes depicting digital communications between Maddy and Olly. Rather than submit her audience to boring views of texting and typing, she shares her characters’ fantasies of chatting face-to-face in the outside world. Or, to be more precise, in life-size versions of diners and libraries that Maddy, a budding architect, has constructed as scale models. (Yes, that sounds impossibly gimmicky, but it works, both dramatically and emotionally.) Another clever touch: Maddy often thinks of herself as an astronaut, encased in a protective suit in order to survive in a hostile environment, so, sure enough, an astronaut periodically pops up in the fantasies to offer advice and enact sight gags.