‘Girls Like Girls’ Review: Hayley Kiyoko Gives Tumblr Lesbians a Dreamy Excuse to Kiss at the Movies

Share Share on Facebook Post google Google Preferred Share on LinkedIn Show more sharing options Share to Flipboard Submit to Reddit Pin it Post to Tumblr Email Print This Page Share on WhatsApp Hayley Kiyoko‘s “Girls Like Girls” arrives in theaters this weekend carrying an unusually heavy burden. The directorial debut of a beloved queer artist affectionately known as Lesbian Jesus (yes, that’s really what Kiyoko’s fans like to call her) would be enough to generate serious buzz on its own. But the 35-year-old singer-songwriter’s first major movie is also based on her landmark music video from 2015, a legendary text for a certain generation of very online queer women.

Hovering around 163 million views on YouTube today, the original “Girls Like Girls” music video is a viral Tumblr-era phenomenon that helped shape sapphic culture in the digital age. Kiyoko’s sun-soaked fairytale — about two teen girls falling in love against a tumultuous backdrop of suburban longing and hidden desire — even inspired the pop icon to write a best-selling YA novel about its characters in 2023. Related Stories The Most Interesting Thing About John Early’s Directorial Debut Is Not That He’s Playing a Woman Inside ‘Tony,’ the A24 Movie About the Provincetown Summers That Made Anthony Bourdain Translating that text to the big screen seemed like an obvious next step for Kiyoko.

And, at a time when studios are frantically searching for creative ways to compel internet audiences toward real-world experiences, it’s also a savvy business move from distributor Focus Features. The need for a feel-good queer movie is palpable this summer, too; more than a decade since the original “Girls Like Girls,” the culture surrounding Kiyoko’s hit song has changed as much as the entertainment industry itself. When the track and music video debuted in 2015, same-sex marriage had only just become legal nationwide in the United States.

Now, many LGBTQ Americans are willing to pay more for safe and inclusive experiences — precisely because civil liberties and onscreen representation feel less secure than they once did. ‘Girls Like Girls’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection And yet, for “Girls Like Girls” the movie, the final result is less a standalone work of great cinema announcing Kiyoko as a feature director, and more an act of dreamy devotion designed to comfort her core fanbase. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But it does change who, and perhaps what, this soulful and peculiar film adaptation is for. Far from a concert movie, “Girls Like Girls” is a nostalgic period romance that demonstrates its director’s enduring connection to the bite-sized love story she co-directed with Austin S. Winchell in 2015.

Unfortunately, the earlier version’s charms don’t always translate to a larger canvas, which leaves “Girls Like Girls thin as a feature. Co-written by Kiyoko and actress Stefanie Scott (who also appeared in the music video), the new film’s uneven script struggles to build an accessible world that’s as emotionally rich as the personal memories many viewers will bring with them to theaters. ‘Girls Like Girls’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection Set in 2006, “Girls Like Girls” follows grieving teen Coley (Maya da Costa) as she moves to Oregon to live with her estranged dad (Zach Braff).

There, Coley falls for the magnetic but emotionally unavailable Sonya (Myra Molloy), and the broad strokes of the girls’ story, along with many of the original video’s most recognizable images, will be familiar to Kiyoko’s longtime fans. Shimmering pools, yellow bikes with butterfly handles, and rushed glances over tall fields of grass produce enough pining between Sonya and Coley to fuel a thousand AIM drafts. Their spark is underscored by a recurring piano riff from the namesake song, but Kiyoko smartly expands her film’s retro musical influences to a wider aughts catalog rather than just turning “Girls Like Girls” into a feature-length vehicle for her own greatest hits: needle drops ranging from Imogen Heap to Tegan and Sarah evoke a version of the early 21st century that feels equally tailored to Millennials who came of age alongside Kiyoko as it does the scads of Gen Z listeners who are currently fascinated by the Y2K nostalgia craze.

In this vein and at its best, “Girls Like Girls” manages the melodramatic juice of something like “The O.C.” while lightly brushing against melancholia reminiscent of Sofia Coppola‘s “Virgin Suicides.”

‘Girls Like Girls’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection Kiyoko understands that the most compelling part of young queer love isn’t always the romance itself but the dizzying realization that an intimate and important friendship has become something much more complicated. Da Costa proves particularly effective in conveying that feeling, possessing an expressive gravity that doesn’t need dialogue to land, even as many of her scripted emotional beats prove awkwardly broad. On the flipside, Sonya (through no fault of Mo