** outta *****

2 outta 5

Written and directed Jonah Hill, Mid90s certainly has a sense of time and place, mostly because it’s directly in the title. With the squared off boxy aspect ratio that makes it look like something on an old broadcast TV it certainly seems like something from another era. Coming of age stories are never really a new idea, all that really changes is the music selection or the logos on the t-shirts. What is important is if it’s moving or funny. Hill’s Mid90s seems sort of like a mumble movie with documentary immediacy. It’s not all that funny or stirring even though it does perk to life every once in awhile.

Stevie (Sunny Suljic) is a suburban kid in the middle of the 1990s dealing with his abusive brother Ian (Lucas Hedges) and a loving mother, Dabney (Katherine Waterson). One day, Stevie walks into a skateboard shop with the skateboarding drunken no good teenage punks Ray (Na-kel Smith), Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), Ruben (Gio Galicia) and Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin). He starts hanging out with them, getting better at skateboarding but also deeper into drugs and alcohol which concerns his mother. Pretty soon he is in way over his head. 

The vibe so lackadaisical that it makes the movie go by very slowly, which is a feat since it is under 90 minutes. Overall, Hill seems to be ripping off the style of the 1993 Larry Clark movie Kids although this is nowhere near as jolting. This film sort of drifts by. It could be argued that is the point as these teens are drifting aimlessly but there isn’t enough zippy dialogue to keep it engaging. Hill puts in a few funny asides, the messed up conversation that Stevie first overhears at the skate shop about a hypothetical situation involving their parents is darkly hilarious. But overall there is a lot long pauses and not saying anything.

What is good about the setting is the period details are great like Stevie wearing a Street Fighter II shirt. Or the music selection featuring Seal’s corny ballad “Kiss From A Rose” playing at a restaurant. Or the video game technology that is blocky Super Nintendo cartridges. Or Stevie having Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedsheets. Scenes don’t really have clear dramatic beginning and ending yet it does seem very authentic, especially where small interactions between friends can speak volumes. Hill does a good job of composing things in the frame rather nicely such as a repeated visual of the kids rolling their skateboards down a hill. And in one of the movie’s hardest hitting sequences, the kids try to make a very stupid skateboard jump and result is crazy. The unique score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross sometimes does buzzing menace or warm, discordant piano notes that nicely accentuate the emotions of a scene.

Suljic is pretty much in every single scene in the movie and he gets to show Stevie stuck between being a meek kid and young adult. Still he has a few scenes where he freaks out that are riveting. The buddies have some colourful names. Fuckshit is probably the best named one because that is what he says all the time and Prenatt plays him irritating but near the end he has lonely pathos. However, his actions at the end are downright stupid which doesn’t make him very likable. Smith as Ray dispenses wisdom and gets a great speech about the home troubles the kids have to deal with. McLaughlin is funny as the video camera carrying dopey Fourth Grade who is called that because the kids say he’s only as smart as someone in 4^th grade. Ruben introduces Stevie into the group and Galicia shows him becoming more embittered as the crew begins to like Stevie more than him.

Hedges seems to be in a very different, and probably much more compelling movie about a lonely young man dealing with a lot of inner repressed rage. But it’s kind of hard to care that much about him because the movie literally opens with him beating the hell out of his little brother so he’s automatically cast as a bad, abusive overbearing jerk. It seems just like another mopey Oscar-bait Lucas Hedges role which would be what is seemingly required of him since Lady Bird and Manchester By the Sea. Waterson is playing an impossibly young mother of a grown 18 year old son, so much so that her first scene she literally comments on the fact that she was a mother when she was 18.  Still the scenes where she has to engage in parental guidance with her kids is well done. Basically the only really pleasant character is the mom while the kids are just kind of constant jerks which makes the movie hard to like. 

Mid90s definitely has some moments that spark to life. But overall it’s sort of tepid mush that can be so low key and trying for a distinct grungy feel that it’s almost asleep. The coming of age genre needs elements that makes it distinct, something like the cracking script of Lady Bird or a cool story like Stand By Me. Unfortunately, Mid90s mostly just offers cool t-shirts, retro gaming and a unique aspect ratio and that doesn’t quite cut it.