Review: Mid90s (2018)

Mid90s (2018)

I really wanted to like this film, I really did. It is not a bad film by any means, but it becomes apparent about halfway through that its tone and direction is fairly misguided. At times, the film plays out like the grungy faux-doc films of the 90's/early-00's by Larry Clark and Harmony Korine that centred on youth cultures. Director/writer, Jonah Hill's, inspiration by these predecessors is quite apparent from the relatively no-name cast, the grainy film style, the improvised dialogue sequences, and the small cameo by Korine himself. However, it is, perhaps, Hill's Hollywood sensibilities that restrain him from taking the film to that next (and difficult) level that the earlier films, Kids, Bully and Gumbo, were able to reach.

As one would surmise, Mid90s is about the youth of the 1990s, specifically here, a boy on the cusp of teenagehood, Stevie (Sunny Suljic), who tries to escape his violent brother (Lucas Hedges) and often non-present mother (Katherine Waterston) to find people he can better associate and connect with. He ends up running into a group of local ragamuffin skateboarders who eventually take Sunny in as one of their own. The group consists of the normal smattering of characters: the leader/mentor (who Sunny forms a special bond with), the clown (aptly named "Fuckshit"), the quiet outsider, and the rival (the formerly youngest of the group who becomes jealous of Sunny's popularity). As such, the film follows Sunny's journey as he takes on a new identity within the skateboarding sub-culture of the 90's.

The film works best when it focuses on the skateboarding culture as a whole. These are the pseudo-doc scenes mentioned above, where the camera seemingly acts as a fly-on-the-wall taking in the meandering conversations and interactions of the skateboarding youth of this bygone decade. These scenes are very effective and the most compelling to watch unfold. However, the film still has a script, and a story it wants to tell, and it is when it enters into these more dramatic (and predictable) moments that the film loses its steam and momentum. These scenes draw you out of the naturalistic atmosphere, and this is partly due to the cliche speeches, as well as, that it becomes apparent that a number of these actors have more-or-less never acted before. To be fair, for most of the film the first-timer actors do a remarkable job - Suljic and Olan Prenatt, in particular are standouts. However, it is when the direction and script become a bit more commonplace that the lack of acting experience becomes more obvious. In a similar way, the film loses its magic a bit when Hill shifts from the low-key directing style into more Hollywood-esque time jump and montage sequences. The film relies heavily on a soundtrack featuring songs of the 90s and, although this makes sense on paper, to me the music felt a bit distracting and I would have preferred a more complementary underlying score that may have led to highlighting the general atmosphere and performances better. Additionally, the final act of the film did not work for me at all. I will not spoil it here but the heavily jarring direction/editing of some of the final scenes did not impart the feeling or message that I believe Hill was intending for.