‘Young Werther’ Review: Suitor or Stalker? This Canadian Comedy’s Blindly Narcissistic Hero Is Both

variety.com:

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Arguably one of the most insufferable protagonists in literature is the title figure in Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” — a martyr to unrequited love who ultimately commits suicide.

The author soon distanced himself from this early work, despite the fame it brought him. No doubt that was largely because the fuel it provided for the subsequent Romantic movement (which he disdained) proved so flammable; there arose real-life cases of copycat self-annihilation amongst readers who fancied themselves as theatrically bereft as his hero.

Few beyond academics now are likely to recall the huge cultural impact the book had a quarter-millennium ago. Still, you needn’t be savvy to that historical footnote to enjoy the new “Young Werther” — though it does help. “Based on the smash hit 1774 novel of tragic romance,” as opening onscreen text announces, Jose Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenco’s debut feature is a confident, clever update.

Its own jeune homme figure again suffers the torments of an impossible love. But here he finally learns what his predecessor couldn’t: That the world does not end when you don’t get what you want, and insisting it should is the height of selfishness.