Music and sound are gentle and well picked to bring out emotions , so that in combination with the art means that moments lacking in plot-driven interest often make up for it through pure atmospheric value.
Really, it's good that the aesthetics can carry the movie, because the characters can be frustrating and the plot is feeble at best.
As this was the highest ranked shounen-ai, I entered thinking this would be a genuine romance with a fairly realistic story - barring cute coincidences. Instead, I got something pretty typical - boy meets boy, they run into issues that could be solved through minimal amounts of communication, and ultimately put issues aside because their love is too powerful to fight, or whatever... It felt pretty weak, and 'important' moments in the relationship just didn't carry any weight.
This was mostly because neither character really bothers to work for their relationship. They both enter it thinking the hard part's over, and freeze at the hint of any kind of challenge. Any time they're in conflict, they let it fester until they can have a big, dramatic moment which loses the heartwarming factor in favour of a frustration because they could have just talked to eachother, damn it.
(Spoiler: Seriously, who follows up "I guess we don't know anything about each other." with "We shouldn't meet for a while"????)
Overall, Doukyuusei is sweet and pretty, but painfully shallow. It's nice if all you're looking for is some blushy faces and cute kisses, but it pretty much fails as a depiction of a relationship.
(Also, a warning: there's a random taboo interaction between a teacher and a student stuck in there for nothing more than an extra dramatic event. Why.)
