This entire film is just a long way to make you feel so bad for Natalie Dyer’s character. All you do the whole film is yell at her to stand up for herself. It’s painful to watch, but her doe-eyes help carry you along because she is just so innocent. I’ve always been a Timothy Simmons fan, but he wasn’t playing the comedic character he normal excels at. Everything here is about hypocrisy and its something that a lot of coming-of-age films don’t really explore. Hypocrisy is something everyone realizes about the world as no one lives their 100% open and honest (maybe a Buddhist monk, but who’s to say really?). This is applied to everything from sexual experiences, religion, school, everything. Setting the film during the ‘90s is also pitch perfect as it really takes advantage of that time period’s world and technology in all of the best ways from AOL to playing snake on the Nokia phone. It feels very inspired by what the Hulu series PEN15 does, albeit in a more grounded way.
