"Banana Split" opens with a montage, a bold and not entirely successful choice, showing the falling-in-love, virginity-losing, and eventual old-married-couple-fighting of April (Marks) and her hottie boyfriend Nick (Dylan Sprouse). As the montage reveals in a quick succession of scenes, they're together for two years (basically a 40-year-marriage in high school years). But when April gets into Boston University, all the way across the country from Los Angeles, things change. Nick is going to school locally in California. He's hurt she would make such a choice. The two don't break up in a formal way. April still thinks they're going out, until one day she notices something horrifying: Nick posting pictures on his Instagram of him making out with another girl.
April is a pretty tough cookie, and judging from her mother (a very funny Jessica Hecht), and her trash-talking younger sister (Addison Riecke), the apples all fall from the same tree. Tough as she may be, April is devastated by Nick abandoning her (and confused by him still texting her). Luke Spencer Roberts plays Ben, friend to both Nick and April, who finds himself stuck in the middle. Meanwhile, April becomes obsessed with this new girl, who has dropped into their crowd from out of nowhere. She is Clara (Liana Liberato), a coolly beautiful and confident blonde, and April glowers at her from across crowded parties, getting way too drunk, tears pooling up in her eyes. Eventually, though, the girls become friends, and decide to continue their friendship without telling anyone—not Nick, not social media, no one. It's like they are cheating on everyone with each other. They sneak around, and Clara keeps seeing Nick, and April has many mixed feelings.
The script was co-written by Hannah Marks and Joey Power (this is their second script, the first being 2018's "After Everything"). Marks also served as executive producer for the film. Marks is just 27 years old, and this alone is hope for the future. Young women creating their own work, initiating projects, getting it done, not waiting around for someone in power to "give them" roles they deserve. Marks was recently named by Rolling Stone as one of the "25 under 25 changing the world." A heady label, but Marks seems more than ready to take on all those challenges. As children, both Marks and Liberato were profiled in a 2006 New York Times Magazine article about child actors (Liberato was featured on the cover). Child actors often flame out, suffering from the "too much too soon" tradition in the industry. But Marks and Liberato have made that transition with grace: they both work all the time, in television series (Marks in "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and Liberato in "Sons of Anarchy" and "Light as a Feather"). In 2011, Liberato gave a tremendous performance in David Schwimmer's "Trust" playing a 14-year-old child lured into a "relationship" by a much-older online predator.
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