Mid90s | Film Review

Mid90s is the type of movie that makes us relive the experiences of our formative years and reminds us what it was like to survive our youth. It’s a film about growing up, about friendships and bonds, and about all of the turmoil a young kid has to face.

We follow 13 year-old Stevie (Sonny Suljic), who definitely doesn’t look like he’s thirteen years old but it certainly makes the intimacy with a 15 year old a little less creepy. He’s clearly been the kid who was beaten up on by his older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges), whose mom (Katherine Waterston) cared for him but not in the way you’d hope for or expect, and he’s the one who accepted everything. It’s not to say that he made excuses for shitty behavior, but he never responded much to what comes his way. Stevie’s quiet and reserved, but his world opens up when he sees these skaters and checks out their local shop. He meets this group of guys who take him in under their wing and teach him their ways – for better or worse.

Anyone who grew up in this era and was in the skater scene understands that relieving feeling you get when you see the carefree nature of a skateboarder in their natural element, just cruising the streets laughing with their friends and listening to music. Anyone who grew up in this environment understands that feeling when you walk into a skate shop and just automatically feel accepted – it didn’t take much. You didn’t have to try so hard to be something you’re not. If you were into that scene, now you have friends who get it… who get you. Being part of a skateboard “clique” taught you to accept people who had different opinions, ideas, and aspirations than you. It taught you that you can love someone despite their actions, because your bond was far beyond that. You could have had the worst day of your life, but you toss your board on the concrete and roll those wheels and it’s like all of your worries fade away. That’s what skating is.

Stevie is this impressionable and seemingly sweet kid who never let the traumatic elements of his life weigh him down, but he never seemed quite happy either, until he saw this group of friends happy. He starts off with this, I guess, friendship between the other young kid of the group, Ruben (Gio Galicia), who really just wants to be able to say he’s the cool one and not the young turtle of the bale anymore. He attempts to teach Stevie the ways of “being cool”, and apparently that means smoking cigarettes and disregarding your manners or else you’ll be called a ‘fa**ot’ – sigh, the 90’s.

Stevie quickly coins himself a nickname (“sunburn”) from the rest of the group, which shows he might have a place here after all. Finally. Friendship. Sunburn is now finding a comforting parental figure in Ray (Na-kel Smith), a bad influence who likes to have fun – and also looks like an up-and-coming pro snowboarder with curly locks I’m ready to steal for myself – in Fuckshit (Olan Prenatt), Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin) – who is the guy that, much like sunburn, keeps his thoughts to himself, and he finds an overly jealous sibling-type in Ruben, who ultimately helps him to break his shell and fight back against those who try to step on him – including his jerk of an older brother. It’s these friendships that help build our main character by the end, and it’s those same friendships that helped build us all while growing up, too.

The film has many simple twists and turns between friends, family, and dumb stunts that put their lives in danger, but those turns are maneuvered just like one would maneuver around a piece of garbage on the street they’re skating on. Sometimes it throws you off-course and sometimes you get hurt, but you grab your board and try again. These kids – aged from 13 to 17 or so – all survive because of their love for skateboarding. For some, it’s a way to survive in the future – by aspiring to get a job in the field of skateboarding, but for others, it’s a way to survive their home-life. Without skating for these boys, they would likely end up dead. This hobby is more than just that to them, and writer/director Jonah Hill deeply portrays this through the context of the film. It’s something they need – like how we need water for functionality and oxygen for our lungs – to keep them going. It’s a brilliant way to depict how our hobbies keep us sane and how friendships build us up and sometimes, break us down. We all can relate to that in one way or another – it just happened to mostly be skateboarding in the Mid90s.

The direction of the story from Hill isn’t anything that’s groundbreaking, it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, and it isn’t one that is working to change your mind. He cleverly uses a full-screen format to make us feel like we are not only watching a movie set in the 90’s, but that we too have reverted back in time. This piece takes us back to the 90’s, not just with the nostalgic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles blanket and Wu Tang posters, but with the plot of the film. The 90’s were all about survival and relationships. It was a time when you could differ on every opinion in the book with someone and still love them for what you DID bond over. The 90’s were genuinely about ‘how can I get through the darkest time in my life, depressed? How do I get past death, poverty, judgement, and insecurities?’ – and that’s what Mid90s is and represents.

It’s a simple story about growing up, sure, but the way life throws curve balls at you and how you respond to them is one of the most basic and yet complex situations we as humans have to face. And honestly, at that age, we had no idea how to do it. We had no idea how to get out of the rut of life, how to stop ourselves from ending it all because we just couldn’t handle the monotony and crap that we as children just happened to be placed in by our families and society, but that’s what this is all about. It’s about how one kid primarily, alongside a group of other struggling kids, make it through the day. And what about that is simple?

The largest complaint I’ve heard from others is the ending. Now, of course this is spoiler-free, but it’d be a shame to not address it at all. It took me some time to decide how I felt about it. After sitting on it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a little more abrupt than I expected – blunt, if you will – but, it completely fit with the tone of the film. It’s different and it worked for me.

Speaking of things that worked for me, let’s talk about that score, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Man, what incredibly talented guys. Music helps transport us and it can help emit any emotion it so pleases. The exceptional aesthetic Reznor and Ross crafted for us to truly immerse ourselves into the film put the cherry on the top of this tasty banana split.

Mid90s excellently illustrates youth attempting to find their identity, accepting others even when we can’t accept ourselves, and human survival. Beautiful performances from the cast, a genuinely hysterical dialogue, and tons of those 90’s throwbacks to get you all caught up in your feels – Jonah Hill’s Mid90s will make you want to grab your board out of the garage and skate away your worries.