Mid90s (2018)

Jonah Hill channels his inner Sean Baker with his debut as writer/director, Mid90s. It is not the millennial nostalgia film it is being sold as. It is a hard hitting look at how poverty, racial tension, and toxic masculinity overlap and eat away at young men. Hill finds some optimism in all of this but he also doesn’t pull any punches. Mid90s ends up being a tougher watch than one would expect.

Filled with mostly unprofessional actors, Mid90s explores the youth of a poor kid in LA in the 1990s who is obsessed predictably with skating and rap and escaping the abusive home he comes from. While there isn’t a lot new in that story, what is there to appreciate is the fresh way Hill tells his story and films his cast who give raw, yet honest performances.

The story is rough and to be honest the misogyny and homophobia throughout was hard to sit through without the film calling it out. I get the authenticity of that but having some payoff where our hero escapes it a bit would have been welcome. Mid90s does look for hope and finds some in the end, making its romanticising of the toxic culture a bit disappointing.

However Mid90s does show a very promising debut for Hill in this role. He is taking on more interesting challenges as an actor lately and succeeding. Now seeing this he is becoming one of the more interesting people in Hollywood to watch.

Mid90s
Starring: Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, Katherine Waterston
Writer/Director: Jonah Hill