Mid90s – first look review

Cyn­ics may won­der what Jon­ah Hill has to bring to the com­ing-of-age genre in his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Mid90s – after all, many a suc­cess­ful actor has turned their hand to film­mak­ing to under­whelm­ing effect. Per­haps a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism is no bad thing when it comes to film crit­i­cism, but in this case, all fears of Hill’s film being lit­tle more than a van­i­ty project dis­ap­pear with­in the first five min­utes of this sweet, bloody-knuck­led take on teenage life.

Thir­teen-year-old Ste­vie (Sun­ny Suljic) lives with his sin­gle moth­er Dab­ney (Katharine Water­ston) and surly 18-year-old broth­er Ian (Lucas Hedges), who takes great delight in beat­ing up and derid­ing his younger sib­ling at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. It goes beyond play­ful facial rival­ry: Ian is vio­lent towards Ste­vie and treats him with con­tempt, while Ste­vie reacts only by idol­is­ing his broth­er, seek­ing to impress him by lis­ten­ing to the same music, des­per­ate to be his friend.

When this fails, he befriends a local group of skaters, com­prised of Ray (Na-kel Smith), Fuck­shit (Olan Pre­natt), Fourth Grade (Ryder Mclaugh­lin) and Ruben (Gio Gali­cia). Soon wel­comed into their rough and ready fam­i­ly, he takes to skat­ing, smok­ing and drink­ing in part to impress his new friends, but main­ly because he’s des­per­ate­ly look­ing for an escape from the rest of his life.

In a remark­ably ten­der and often heart-break­ing per­for­mance, Suljic con­veys a lot while actu­al­ly speak­ing very lit­tle. He self-harms to alle­vi­ate the pain of feel­ing like he doesn’t fit in, and has a seem­ing­ly per­ma­nent scowl only replaced by a beam­ing grin when he’s shown pos­i­tive atten­tion by his new­found friends.

Skat­ing allows their tribe a sense of infi­nite free­dom – they’re hap­pi­est when they’re on their boards. Although Stevie’s friends are bad influ­ences in some ways, they care deeply for their young pal, pro­vid­ing him with the life lessons and emo­tion­al sup­port he’s been lack­ing from his actu­al fam­i­ly. Hill’s script is often­times very fun­ny (no sur­pris­es there) but it’s the deep cuts about grow­ing up which real­ly demon­strate his tal­ent as a writer.

Shot on Super 16mm at a 4:3 aspect ratio, Hill cap­tures the rough and ready aes­thet­ic of ​’90s Los Ange­les with­out it ever feel­ing cliché, giv­ing the film a unique look which sees blue skies con­trast­ed against ashy con­crete. The eclec­tic sound­track fea­tures era-appro­pri­ate songs from the likes of Nir­vana, GZA, Cypress Hill and the Pix­ies, but it’s Trent Reznor and Atti­cus Ross’ melan­choly score which real­ly com­ple­ments the film’s sense of fragili­ty and ado­les­cent lone­li­ness. Mid90s is a scrap­py tri­umph, with heart, soul and a bound­less sense of ado­les­cent energy.