Movie Review: Mid 90's

Review Written by Michael J. Ruhland

Michael's Movie Grade: B

Review: While it doesn't reach the heights of the other A24 movies we have had so far, Mid 90's is an enjoyable film that shows Jonah Hill as a talented director.

What works best about this movie is the main characters. It would be easy to have make the older teenagers completely unlikable and all together bad. However this movie shows them as abundantly human. They may be into bad things and introduce a young teenage kid to the world of sex, drugs and alcohol, but they don't set out to hurt the kid. They truly grow to love him. This is shown very well in one scene involving a one on one talk with one of the older teenagers and younger teenagers. This scene is very well written and extremely well acted (by Sunny Suljic and Na-kel Smith). This scene works so well because what we are seeing on screen is treated so real. We believe every word of this conversation and get very much involved in the emotion of the scene. Na-kel Smith's performance in this film is amazing and it is strange to think this is his first movie. I see great things in the future for him. Much of the dialogue in this film is not as touching and heartfelt. In fact it is downright vulgar. While this dialogue could certainty turn me off at times, this is fully the way kids this age talk, giving a sense of realism to the characters. This movie also looks very good. Christopher Blauvelt's cinematography is excellent providing a certain nostalgic feel to this movie that fits the era perfectly. Speaking about the era, the soundtrack is filled with 90's hip-hop and hard rock songs. Truth be told these songs are not my taste in music by any means. However I can't deny how much these songs help evoke the era in which this movie takes place in and how well this works. More to my taste is Trent Razor and Atticus Ross' music score. This is an excellent score that perfectly evokes the emotion of what is happening in the film.


The story in this movie can seem meandering at times. The film doesn't always seem to know what it is trying to say. There are times when I am not sure what various scenes were going for. There was one particularly awkward sex scene that made me feel really uncomfortable. This scene was not uncomfortable in a fascinating or thought provoking way. Instead I just felt embarrassed for watching it and wondered what exactly it was supposed to add to the rest of the movie. I am still unsure of what I was supposed to make of the ending, but still I felt I didn't get whatever emotional connection I was supposed to have to this. While some of the characters are well thought it this is not true of every character. Fourth Grade just felt like poor comedy relief without anything that made the rest of the characters so interesting. Similarly was Stevie's brother, who felt like your typical movie jerk of a big brother, but even less developed.

If you try to compare this to A24's previous work it is bound to disappoint, but taken on its own terms it is quite good.

-Michael J. Ruhland