Mid90s

2018 movie about skateboarding

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Not much of one actually. A troubled kid meets some older skateboarding kids and almost kills himself a few times.

I'm going to have a problem if Lucas Hedges is going to be in every other movie. He's in this, and he was in two movies that were previewed before this movie. I just checked, and these are his only 2018 movies, so I guess I can cool down a little.

I didn't think I was liking this nearly-plotless first feature from Jonah Hill. It's less a story than a series of vignettes, but the parts add up to a whole that creates some likable characters and even more likable relationships. I ended up liking the characters, both the parts of them that were lovable and their flaws. There are some tense moments, some funny moments, and some moments that manage to be funny and tense at the same time, and by the end, you appreciate the series of vignettes for how well they create these characters and this particular time in these characters' lives.

Sunny Suljic is actually in just as many 2018 films as Hedges. He's good here, especially since of how much he's asked to do here. The wrong kid here, and this might have been Jonah Hill's final movie. The quartet of skateboarding pals are all newcomers, having only five movies counting Mid90s on their combined filmographies, but there's something very natural and likable about them. They've got the skateboarding chops, likely why they were hired, but they also show off a great rapport. It felt like Hill had forced them to hang out a whole bunch and become actual friends for several months before shooting anything. They're refreshing performances.

Hill shows promise as both a writer and director, and it's especially impressive how he doesn't fall into any melodramatic traps. There were moments when he could have leaned on tragedy, and while that might have been easier, he was more drawn to the effects of friendship.

Filled with old-school hip-hop and 90's-era alternative (Hello, Morrissey!) and some dope skateboarding sequences, this will hit the sweet spots of a certain chunk of the population. I might be in that chunk even though I could never even stand on a skateboard.

Horse movies and skateboard movies abound this year. Of those, this would make a nice companion to the documentary Minding the Gap.