Big Time Adolescence – 2019 – Comedy, Drama, Coming of Age
Directed by: Jason Orley
Written by: Jason Orley
Main Players: Griffin Cluck; Pete Davidson; Jon Cryer; Julia Murney; Sydney Sweeney; Emily Arlook; Machine Gun Kelly

As Monroe (Cluck) is led out of his high school classroom by cops, he has flashbacks to blame Zeke (Davidson) and earlier life decisions. Zeke was his older sister Kate’s (Arlook) boyfriend six years ago, who always treated him like a man, despite his young kid status. Zeke, getting dumped over liking another girl’s photo, decides to let kid Monroe hang since he’s “way cooler” than the younger kids his own age.
This begins kid Mo’s journey into hanging out with an older crowd. As the years pass, the older kid crew wanes, moving on with their lives, and six years later we hit the current status: Monroe in high school and Zeke… still around. Zeke works at Refrigeratorville, though how he has remained employed is a mystery. Monroe remains enamored by his elders still, especially their partying ways.
Mo’s parents are less enamored with Zeke who has been hitting up their driveway for years, and are unsure of his impact on their son. Mo focuses on girls and partying, even at times with kids his own age, especially with Zeke dishing him watered down alcohol to provide as well as overpriced weed, clearly an instant hit.
Everyone wants to grow up so fast when they are young, and this movie is quite relatable for just wanting to hang out with the cool kids, and have friends. The dialogue is pretty authentic, so are the character behaviors and motivations. Mostly it is comedic, but it plays it all fairly seriously and has some regular life beats for growing up and mistakes made.
See This If You Liked:
The King of Staten Island; The Spectacular Now; Charlie Bartlett; Booksmart; Superbad; Easy A; The Edge of Seventeen (2016); Eighth Grade; Dazed & Confused; Adventureland; Role Models
Score:
7.0