Mid90s review: Jonah Hill's directorial debut is a problematic paean to adolescence

As an auteur, the actor-turned-director still has much to learn, but is promisingly attuned to the awkward rites of male bonding

Sunny Suljic and Na-Kel Smith in Mid90s (A24)

Dir: Jonah Hill; Cast: Sunny Suljic, Katherine Waterston, Lucas Hedges, Na-kel Smith, Olan Prenatt, Ryder McLaughlin, Gio Galicia. 15 cert, 85 mins

Air Jordans. Hulk Hogan. Ren and Stimpy. On the surface, Jonah Hill’s low-key directorial debut Mid90s is an exercise in nostalgia, a paean to adolescence and that sudden sense of liberation. But peer through the weed haze and you’ll also find a quietly brutal, occasionally problematic, story of loneliness and self-harm. Shot on 16mm film with a retro 4:3 aspect ratio by Christopher Blauvelt, it’s grainy and naturalistic – a kind of cross between Richard Linklater’s Slacker and Larry Clark’s Kids, but with added profanity.

Lending the film considerable ballast is an affecting performance by Sunny Suljic (The Killing of a Sacred Deer). He plays Stevie, a shaggy-haired 13-year-old growing up in a featureless LA neighbourhood with his glowering older brother Ian (Lucas Hedges) and warm but preoccupied mum Dabney (Katherine Waterston). As is established right away, Ian’s a vicious bully, delivering bone-rattling beat-downs on his younger sibling that pack an emotional punch. Yet Stevie worships him. He sneaks into his room, gawps at the clothes and posters, and copies down the names of the hip-hop CDs he sees.

Eventually, Stevie finds new idols among a group of older kids who hang around a skate shop. Ray (Na-Kel Smith, excellent) is the leader, an all-round good guy who might just have the skills to make it as a pro skater. Then there’s his sidekick, F**kS**t (Olan Prenatt), a loudmouth stoner with long ringlets and a permanent grin. Fourth Grade (Ryder McLaughlin) is quiet but videotapes everything. Completing the posse is Ruben (Gio Galicia), a boy only marginally older than Stevie, who dispenses such dubious advice as: “Don’t thank people – they’re gonna think you’re gay.” The banter is daft and coarse – not too dissimilar, then, to that of the Judd Apatow comedies with which Hill made his name (Superbad, Knocked Up).

As Stevie drifts further into a world of ollies and underage nihilism, Hill – who also wrote the screenplay – wrings pathos from the shifting hierarchies within the group. Take a scene in which F**kS**t is too drunk to be cool around Ray’s older friends – you sense the gang’s whole dynamic splintering apart. But Hill also misses a trick, failing to follow through on the fascinating rivalry developing between Ruben and Stevie. Similarly, we’re left in the dark as to why Stevie self-harms. We see him wrapping a video game cord around his throat and aggressively rubbing his thigh with a hairbrush – but where does this impulse come from?

A sequence in which a nervous Stevie is coaxed into a bedroom by a substantially older girl is even more troubling – though strangely, it is presented with an air of unchallenged camaraderie. Not particularly tasteful, either, is the amount of expletives: you suspect Hill thought if Tarantino just about got away with using the n-word in the Nineties, so can he.

For all its deficiencies, however, Mid90s is an effective time capsule, buoyed by one of the best soundtracks of the year (Pixies, Morrissey, Nirvana) and some wonderfully natural performances. As an auteur, Hill still has much to learn, but is promisingly attuned to the awkward rites of male bonding.