Girls Like Girls
Girls Like Girls is exactly what it advertises itself to be. That is both its most honest quality and, for VirtueVigil readers, its most important characteristic to understand upfront.
Full analysis below
Girls Like Girls does not qualify as a woke trap. A woke trap requires a negative margin AND woke content concealed until after the 50 percent mark. This film has a negative margin, scoring -12.64 WOKE. However, the sapphic romance is the explicit premise from the opening scenes. Hayley Kiyoko's name is the signal. The song 'Girls Like Girls' that inspired this project was a lesbian anthem a decade before this film existed. Nobody walks into a Hayley Kiyoko coming-of-age romance expecting conservative values. The ideological content is front-loaded and fully disclosed. No bait and switch.
Our Verdict on Girls Like Girls
Girls Like Girls is exactly what it advertises itself to be. That is both its most honest quality and, for VirtueVigil readers, its most important characteristic to understand upfront.
Hayley Kiyoko built a decade of her career on this story. The 2015 song. The music video. The 2023 novel. Now the film. This project did not arrive from a place of cinematic ambition stretching beyond her established brand. It arrived from a place of complete ideological conviction. Kiyoko knows who her audience is. Her audience knows who she is. Girls Like Girls the film exists to serve that relationship.
The story centers on Coley, 17, grieving her mother in rural Oregon. Meeting Sonya disrupts the grief with new, confusing feelings. Sonya, for her part, has never considered dating a girl but finds herself drawn in anyway. The film follows them navigating the gap between self-doubt and connection.
As filmmaking, it is competent. The Kelowna landscapes stand in convincingly for rural Oregon. Sonja Tsypin's cinematography captures the naturalistic intimacy the story requires. Maya da Costa and Myra Molloy carry the emotional weight without being overwhelmed by it. Zach Braff shows up in a supporting role that will not challenge anyone's expectations.
The Guardian called it 'a precious and predictable yawn-a-thon.' The Hollywood Reporter noted the plot is 'so simple that for long stretches it barely counts as a plot at all.' These are accurate observations. The film prioritizes emotional texture over narrative architecture. For audiences seeking that, it delivers. For audiences seeking story, it frustrates.
From a VVWS perspective, there is very little to analyze that is not immediately obvious. The entire film is the woke content. The sapphic romance is not a subplot or a secondary element woven into a larger story. It is the complete picture. A girl meets a girl. Feelings happen. The film's only dramatic question is whether they will act on those feelings. They do.
There are some traditional elements worth noting. The grief processing is genuine and handled with care. The rural Oregon setting carries implied conservatism in its geography, though the film makes no ideological use of it. Coley's dead mother functions as a wound that makes her vulnerable and open to connection. That grief is real and recognizable regardless of ideology.
But the scorecard is what it is. This is a film designed to celebrate and normalize a sapphic teen romance. It does that clearly, competently, and without apology. VirtueVigil readers who want to see it for themselves will find a well-intentioned, modestly executed coming-of-age film that is unambiguous in its ideological commitments. Everyone else already knows to skip it.
Woke Tropes & Content Analysis
Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier
🔴 Woke Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapphic romance as central and complete narrative | 5 | High | High | 6.3 |
| Queer identity exploration as coming-of-age framework | 4 | High | High | 5.04 |
| Bi-curious character normalization | 3 | High | Moderate | 2.1 |
| Absent traditional family structure | 2 | Moderate | Moderate | 2 |
| Emotion-first narrative architecture | 2 | High | Moderate | 1.4 |
| TOTAL WOKE | 16.8 | |||
🟢 Traditional Tropes
| Trope | Severity | Authenticity | Centrality | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grief processing and honoring the dead | 3 | High | Moderate | 2.1 |
| Rural small-town community setting | 2 | High | Low | 0.7 |
| Coming-of-age growth through adversity | 2 | High | Moderate | 1.4 |
| TOTAL TRADITIONAL | 4.2 | |||
Score Margin: -13 WOKE
Director: Hayley Kiyoko
WOKE. Hayley Kiyoko built her public persona explicitly around queer identity. Her music, her brand, and her public advocacy have been openly and consistently ideological for over a decade. She did not arrive at this film accidentally. Girls Like Girls is the film she wanted to make because it is, in every meaningful sense, the film she has always been making. The directorial debut is not a departure from her ideology. It is its clearest expression yet.Hayley Kiyoko is a Los Angeles-born singer, actress, and now filmmaker who became a significant figure in LGBTQ pop culture through her music video work beginning around 2015. Her single 'Girls Like Girls' became an anthem for young queer women and has accumulated enormous streaming numbers. Her subsequent albums and public persona built explicitly on queer identity as a core aesthetic and political statement. She has described herself as 'Lesbian Jesus' in media coverage. Girls Like Girls the film is based on her 2023 novel, which was itself an adaptation of the 2015 song and music video. This is not a filmmaker exploring unfamiliar territory. Kiyoko arrives at feature filmmaking with a fully formed ideological worldview that has been central to her public identity for over a decade. Co-writing the screenplay with Stefanie Scott, and developing the story with Chloe Okuno (director of Watcher, 2022), she assembled a creative team aligned with her sensibility. For VirtueVigil readers, Kiyoko represents one of the clearest examples of a filmmaker whose ideology precedes her work. You know exactly what you are getting before you buy a ticket.
Content Breakdown
Adult Viewer Insight
Girls Like Girls represents a specific cultural phenomenon worth understanding. Hayley Kiyoko spent a decade building an audience of young queer women who felt underrepresented in mainstream pop culture. She gave them music, imagery, and eventually a novel. The film is the logical endpoint of that project. What is notable, from a cultural analysis perspective, is how completely the creative impulse here is driven by identity advocacy rather than storytelling ambition. The film does not use the sapphic romance to tell a larger story about grief, community, rural life, or any other canvas. The romance is the story. That narrowness reflects a specific mode of activist filmmaking that uses personal narrative as its only available frame. For adults seeking to understand the cultural landscape their children inhabit, Girls Like Girls is a useful case study in how LGBTQ identity has moved from subtext to explicit text in mainstream teen-targeted entertainment.
Parental Guidance
Rated R for sexual content and language. The film's core content is a romantic and physical relationship between two teenage girls. Parents with traditional values should treat this as a hard pass. There is no version of Girls Like Girls that is traditional-values-compatible. The grief narrative is handled sensitively and would be appropriate in a different film. Here it serves to make the sapphic romance more emotionally resonant. Not appropriate for children or families seeking traditional entertainment.
Is Girls Like Girls Safe for Kids?
[object Object]
Find Girls Like Girls on Amazon Prime Video, rent, or buy:
▶ Stream or Buy on AmazonAs an Amazon Associate, VirtueVigil earns from qualifying purchases.
Community Discussion 0
Subscribe to comment.
Join the VirtueVigil community to share your perspective on this review.