Review: Mid90s

Image courtesy of A24.

Jonah Hill's directorial debut, "Mid90s," does a decent job of capturing a specific time and place. From the first scenes, in which we see the bedroom of young Stevie (Sunny Suljic), the film's protagonist, we can get a sense of the picture's milieu and the era in which it is set, if the title didn't give the game away already. Stevie's room is adorned with a large Mobb Deep poster and classic hip hop CDs - from Gang Starr to Del the Funky Homosapien - can be spotted on the shelves on his wall. One of his pals wears a Wu-Tang Clan T-shirt and Stevie's mother at one point watches "Goodfellas" on TV.

The picture is shot in a style that might bring to mind Larry Clark controversial "Kids," although "Mid90s," while filled with colorful language and drug use, is milder and slightly more naive than that 1990s movie. Stevie lives with his mother (Katherine Waterston) and often abusive brother (Lucas Hedges). One day, he stumbles onto a group of young skaters and instantly takes a shine to them. Attempting to skate himself - and resulting in numerous crashes and uncomfortable landings on pavement - Stevie endears himself to the skaters, especially its leader, a young black teenager named Ray (Na-kel Smith), who also happens to be the group's champion skater.

Much of what is onscreen during the film's brief running time has been seen before - youthful recklessness, drugs and alcohol, a first-time sex scene, a naive young man growing up (well, sort of), troubled home-fronts, etc. Although overly familiar, Hill does a good job of creating a sense of who this group of kids is, even if the picture doesn't really show us anything new.

There's another element of the film that was a bit troubling, despite its likely accurate portrayal. The boys - as young dumb boys might do - often refer to the film's female characters as "bitches" and see them as conquests. Meanwhile, they throw around the word "fag" and other homophobic slurs with consistency. As a youth, I can attest to having been witness to this type of behavior, well, unfortunately more than one might expect. So, yes, the portrayal of these kids during this era rings true. But the boys are obviously the characters with whom the audience is supposed to relate, and this makes it difficult to do so.

On the other hand, the film's view of masculinity is a probing one, and the picture is clearly set at a moment when this group of kids is at a turning point, one after which they may very well part ways. This is exemplified by the growing rift between Ray, who takes his skating seriously, and FuckShit (Olan Prenatt), who prefers to get drunk, as well as the tension between Stevie and Ruben (Gio Galicia), who first initiates him into the group, but then becomes jealous when the others prefer Stevie to him.

Some of the other characters are underdeveloped, such as Stevie's mom, whose character merely reacts to what is going on with Stevie, and somewhat unevenly - at times, she is concerned, while at others rarely present. Also, Ian (Hedges) is a vicious bully, but we know little else about what makes him tick. On the whole, "Mid90s" does a nice job of capturing the essence of this group of kids, but the film is otherwise a fairly routine picture about the woes and joys of youth's folly.