YMMV / Sierra Burgess is a Loser

• Adaptation Displacement: Not many people know that the film is a loose modern adaptation of a classic play, Cyrano de Bergerac, with the character's gender being swapped.
• Designated Hero: Sierra. She goes the extra mile in order to catfish Jamey, even enlisting Veronica in order to kiss him under the pretense he's kissing her, and she ends up overreacting to a perceived slight, outing the fact that Veronica was dumped by Spence on Instagram, humiliating her in front of the whole school. The movie tries to have her make amends with the song 'Sunflower', but the movie still tries to play Sierra as the hero, who is also a victim, who is sympathetic. It didn't work for audiences.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Many fans think that Sierra/Veronica would have been a much more likable and compelling couple than Sierra/Jamey, due to how close they end up becoming and the character development that arises from their friendship.
  • Many other fans think Jamey/Veronica would have been a better couple, because at least then Jamey wouldn't have ended up with a manipulative liar.
• Heartwarming Moments: The ending where Veronica and Sierra hug and Dan joins them..
  Okay you two cannot be best friends without me.
• Hollywood Homely: Sierra is said to be very unattractive when she has average looks at worst.
• Narm:
  • The movie tries to paint Sierra as a smart, poetic soul, but her dialogue (and texts she sends Jamey) really don’t come off that way. They instead come off as things a very basic, "fake deep" person would say.
  • The idea that Veronica being dumped over DM would really make her “the biggest loser in this school”. While Veronica being embarrassed over it is understandable, it’s unrealistic that anyone else from her school would care, and even then, in Real Life, most people would sympathize with her and call Spence the asshole.
• Nightmare Fuel: The part where Spence lures Veronica to make out in the car with him is this. The audience (and possibly Sierra) might believe that he is going to rape her, though what he does is still absolutely terrible. He takes photos of them without her consent.
  • Veronica's situation; see Tearjerker.
  • From Jamey's point of view, having been duped and manipulated the way he was in the film.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: This video explains all of the wasted opportunities this movie had.
  • The film, after the hype about casting teen film veterans like Lea Thompson and Alan Ruck as Sierra's parents, really wasted potential to build upon their relationship and the disagreements they have regarding their parenting philosophies and about the former's relationship with her daughter, given how one occupies a conventional beauty end of the scale and her daughter deviates from that convention.
    Sierra: Dad, it's terrifying growing up under your shadow. You're a genius, Mom's gorgeous and successful. I am...I don't know what I am. I'm neither of those things. How can I top that?
    The Audience: Why didn't we hear more about this before?!?!
• Tear Jerker: Veronica being mistreated by people she trusted (her family, friends, Sierra, boyfriend Spence, and her friends on the cheer squad). The capper is that she gets her Direct Messages screenshot-ed and broadcast during a football game and then comes her breakdown when getting confronted by Jamey. She is breaking down in tears over being betrayed by someone she learned to trust. Even Dan, who never liked her before, felt bad for her.
  • The reveal from Jamey's POV: he fell for a girl he felt he could trust and talk to and thought she was what he saw, only to find that they were playing imposter. You practically wanted to tell the Coach (who is ushering him back to the game) "Please do!"
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: We're clearly supposed to root for Sierra, and the movie establishes how she's bullied, insecure about her appearance, and in the shadow of her successful parents. However, this is not nearly enough justification or explanation for the schemes she pulls or how she manipulates Jamey and publicly humiliates Veronica; made even worse with how she is Easily Forgiven by both of them and Dan in the end.
• The Woobie: Veronica and Jamey.
  • Veronica starts out as Jerkass Woobie before her Character Development, at which point she becomes a straight-up Woobie. Her dad walked out on her family for another woman, which her materialistic and image-obsessed mother is in utter denial about and she gets tormented constantly by her bratty younger sisters. Her mother pressures her to be beautiful and popular and base her entire self-worth around this and she secretly feels extremely insecure about being perceived as Book Dumb, thinking she's stupid and being teased for it. Subsequently, she takes this out on other people like Sierra. Veronica gets dumped over DM by her manipulative boyfriend Spence, who she wants to get back with out of desperation to be loved and seen as cool despite the fact he treats her like garbage. After spending time with Sierra, she has a Jerkass Realization and becomes a better person, and comes to see Sierra as a true friend she can be herself around, whom she also goes out of her way to help. Sierra repays her by publicly humiliating her in front of the entire school and making her seem like an unfaithful girlfriend over a perfectly innocent misunderstanding which wasn't even really Veronica's fault.
  • Jamey is a genuinely sweet guy who gets hardcore catfished. He finds out that his girlfriend whom he truly cares for supposedly cheated on him... Only for it to turn out she wasn't actually the girl he'd been building a relationship with for several weeks and that he been lied to and manipulated this whole time. Oh, and he finds this out in public.

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