Back In The Mid90s, A Solid Coming of Age Story Occurred Just As Bojack Horseman Was On A Very Famous TV Show

First Jordan Peele, then Bo Burnham, now Jonah Hill, there are so many comedians getting into the business of directing dramatic pieces of cinema these days! At this pace, I expect Horatio Sanz to have an acclaimed indie feature out by Summer 2020 at the latest. Hill's contribution to this trend is a coming-of-age story called Mid90s taking place in the middle of the (when else?) 1990's. Serving as Hill's first time directing or writing a movie (though he has received a Story By credit on a number of past movies), Mid90s isn't as good as the directorial debuts from the aforementioned likes of Peele or Burnham, but it is good enough to make me curious about where Hill goes as a filmmaker from here, he's certainly got a distinctive creative voice that has real potential.

The main character of Mid90s is a 13-year-old by the name of Stevie (Sunny Suljic), who has a troubled home life primarily due to his physically abusive brother, Ian (Lucas Hedges), as well as an inescapable feeling of loneliness. Considering he doesn't really feel like his home is a home despite the efforts of his caring mother, Dabney (Katherine Waterston), it's no wonder that Stevie would search for a surrogate family and he ends up finding one in a group of local skateboarders that include Ray (Na-kel Smith) and Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt). Stevie begins to grow close to these guys and finds some sense of peace in the art of skateboarding, even if it's clear that the group isn't the best influence on the youngster. 

Despite being set in a decade that isn't regularly the backdrop for these type of coming-of-age stories and having a story that tries to add dimension to the usually stereotyped members of the skateboarding community, Mid90s biggest problem is that a lot of its characters and plot points come off as competent but not especially imaginative. The likes of Lady Bird and Do The Right Thing built up their everyday worlds with complex & highly specific characters and locations that Mid90s tends to lack, these skateboarders and the constantly changing locations where they engage in their illegal skateboarding just failed to register as all that distinctive in my eyes. Stevie's friends especially feel like they could have used more depth, characters like Fuckshit or aspiring filmmaker Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin), for instance, don't get as many dimensions as they should, they start out with a single personality trait and stay that way by the time the credits roll.

Those personality traits that define these characters are mostly reasonably entertaining but Mid90s has enough truly standout elements scattered throughout the movie to make its shortcomings, like the more one-note characters, stand out to me more. But the good elements are here and certainly outnumber (though don't outright eliminate) the weaker parts of Mid90s. Most notably, Hill excels best as a director when it comes to handling actors, there are lots of good realistic performances in here that include Sunny Suljic as Stevie in a notable lead role, particularly in how Suljic makes sure that Stevie is still recognizably himself even after he his life changes once he becomes more accepted by his newfound friends.

Na-kel Smith and Lucas Hedges may be the biggest standouts in the cast though, the former making a fantastic acting debut here as the most complex character in the whole production, a teenager with the most ambitions for adulthood in his entire social circle but whose friends keep him back from even attempting to achieve those ambitions. As for Hedges, he takes a hard left turn from the soft-spoken good-natured roles he played in Manchester by the Sea and Lady Bird by portraying the violent older brother of Stevie who makes his younger sibling's life an utter hell. It's impressive just how menacing Hedges is in the part even when he's not punching Stevie like in a scene where he's just standing around with subtly conveyed pent-up rage while Fuckshit just constantly berates him. 

The bold choices made by actors like Smith and Hedges are complimented by a unique style of filming that see's cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt filming the proceedings on Super 16 film in a 1:33:1 aspect ratio. This specific aspect ratio captures everything in a narrow box that necessitates that the cast & crew need to make use of the minimum amount of space they're given in a single shot. This results in some occasionally cramped but mostly inventive blocking & framing of the various characters throughout the story. Some of the characters could stand to be as richly detailed as the way they're filmed, but Mid90s demonstrates enough creativity to make it both a better than usual coming of age story and a commendable first foray into the world of directing for Evan Almighty actor Jonah Hill.