Relive Your Youth With These Coming-Of-Age Films
Do You Like Apples is back with Lady Bird, The Spectacular Now, and more!
What’s up, Do You Like Apples readers! We’re back! We haven’t said this in awhile, but Billy and I want to express how grateful we are that y’all have been so engaged with our little newsletter over these last several months. It means a great deal to us that people have responded to what we’re doing. Now, on to this week’s edition!
Roger Ebert once said, “Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts.”
Nowhere is this more clear than in the coming-of-age film. This genre is responsible for some of the most beloved movies of the last few decades. We’re talking The Breakfast Club, Clueless, The Sandlot, and many more. They can be comedies or dramas, or both. And naturally so, since growing up can be both absurdly hilarious and desperately dramatic.
We were all kids once. This means that even if you are very far away from your childhood, coming-of-age movies can still strike a chord. Even though I have no idea what it is like to grow up black and gay in Miami (2016’s Moonlight) or get pregnant in high school (2007’s Juno), coming-of-age movies can let us explore another’s world for a bit. They allow us to empathize with a situation we aren’t familiar with, because we know how difficult growing up can be.
Billy recommends…
The Spectacular Now (streaming on Netflix)
This is an early A24 film (Moonlight, Lady Bird, Hereditary, and Midsommar are some of their notable ones) and The Spectacular Now is a wonderful early example of the consistent quality of work that they produce. Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley star in one of the more honest coming of age movies you will see. Not too much is dramatized and because of that some may be bored by this one (cough cough, my roommate Garner from college). Thankfully, the scenes are staged and acted so well that I will be shocked if no scenes make you emotional.
Teller plays the slightly popular high school degenerate named Sutter wonderfully. So much so that he had to try and ditch that persona for a few years after this one. It is hard to love these type of characters, but we find out so much about Sutter in this one that makes him an easy person to like. After an all-night bender Aimee stumbles upon Sutter passed out in a random yard while on her paper route. Sutter joins in on the route and naturally a love connection is born.
Aimee is the classic high school movie cliche that is supposed to be an unpopular high school kid, but is obviously really attractive and charismatic. Aimee’s sweet nature allows Sutter to address some of the demons in his past. Mainly coming to grips with the relationship he has with his estranged father. This is where the story goes from typical, fun coming of age story to an incredibly deep story about how our parents shape our lives.
That is what is so unique about this one. So little of the movie takes place at or around the high school they go to. Instead we get deep dives into the intricacies of growing up in broken households. All of our living situations growing up are broken in some way or another, but not many movies get into that as organically as The Spectacular Now. This viewing will give you enough sweet and hilarious moments to propel you through the emotional ones, so don’t let all the talk of the family drama make you skeptical. It really is great and I hope you give it a shot!
Edge of Seventeen (streaming on Netflix)
It shocks me that this movie did not blow up like Lady Bird did. This is not a slight to Lady Bird at all. It is a wonderfully crafted movie, but Edge of Seventeen is a hilarious coming of age story that had me interested to the very end. We follow Hailee Steinfeld who is playing Nadine, a high school student who lost her father recently and the aftermath that came from it all.
The aftermath is played for laughs, most of the time, and it comes from the loveable relationship she has with her teacher. Woody Harrelson plays her teacher and he turns in one of the more memorable performances of his career. Each line he has left me doubled over laughing and the laughs are not there for no reason. It sets up a character who is going to be incredibly meaningful later on in the movie. We need that character because the ride that leads her to need his help is a bumpy ride.
The emotion seems oddly familiar to older coming of age movies like The Breakfast Club. There are seemingly minor grievances in the lives of these high school kids, but the emotional damage that comes from them is so much more than anyone around them could know. Nadine is a master of masking her emotions from the people around her. Her best friend Krista is the only person she can talk to about the loss of her father and as the movie goes along she begins to lose that friendship slightly, forcing her to grasp with these emotions for the first time.
Edge of Seventeen will give you some hard laughs, big smiles, and potential tears. That is why we watch movies though, right? To be stirred up emotionally on multiple levels. Those are at least my favorite type of movies. Do not miss this one before it is gone.
Drew recommends…
Lady Bird (streaming on Amazon Prime)
Lady Bird is that rare movie that you would recommend to anyone. Sharply written with specificity and warmth, first-time writer-director Greta Gerwig discovers the perfect balance of levity and gravity in her coming-of-age dramedy. This is a “last days of adolescence” movie that doesn’t treat high school as a melodrama. Saoirse Ronan is the titular Lady Bird, and she carries the film as a character that is easy to love despite her youthful errors. We follow her throughout her senior year of high school in Sacramento (or, as she calls it, the “Midwest of California”) as she falls in love, fights with her mom (a note-perfect Laurie Metcalf), and longs to attend college on the East Coast (“where writers live in the woods”).
Ronan is in just about every scene and she more than convincingly portrays a curious, lost, unique, funny, and searching Catholic high schooler. Her performance is even more outstanding when you hear her natural Irish accent. Similarly, the rest of the cast is a joy to watch. Timothee Chalamet is wonderful as Lady Bird’s arrogant and insecure boyfriend Kyle, as is Lucas Hedges as Lady Bird’s kind and insecure boyfriend Danny. Beanie Feldstein (co-star of this summer’s Booksmart) plays her best friend Julie, and you 100% believe these two are close, even as their relationship grows cold in the middle.
The humor is less uproarious belly laughs and more clever little moments that will surely seem even funnier on a repeat viewing. Lady Bird is so generous with all its characters, even the ones that could be made into caricatures in a lesser movie. And despite the light touch, Gerwig’s script deals thoughtfully with class, socioeconomic status, and parenting. If there’s ever a movie that will make you want to call your parents, it’s this one.
It’s amazing that Lady Bird is so confident and sure-handed, considering it’s Gerwig’s debut. It’s the kind of film that is a joy to watch, but also really makes you feel everything Lady Bird feels as she comes of age, both the light and the dark moments. You want to watch it again the minute it ends. Ultimately, Lady Bird sets itself apart as a love letter to home, where we all begin to form who we will become.
Rushmore (streaming on Hulu)
Max Fischer is one of Wes Anderson’s best creations. The protagonist of Rushmore is both an insensitive little punk and a lovable busybody. Max, played by Jason Schwartzman in his very first role, is involved in just about every extracurricular activity offered at Rushmore Academy -- the only problem is his grades are failing while he’s off serving as debate team captain and founding the trap and skeet club.
Rushmore also might be Wes Anderson’s best film. It’s one of those movies I could watch on a loop, due to its understated humor and eccentric characters that only get funnier with each viewing. Co-written with his pal Owen Wilson, this idiosyncratic coming-of-age film is a total delight that still manages to carry some emotional weight. Max is the epitome of precocious and he thinks he already knows it all. Of course, we come to see that certainly isn’t true, in amusing fashion. Mostly thanks to Schwartman’s impressive performance, a character that at first glance may appear to be an obnoxious kid turns out to have more interior depth than we thought.
This was Bill Murray’s first appearance in a Wes Anderson movie. In true Bill Murray fashion, the actor basically worked for free to help keep the film’s costs down, because he loved the script and Anderson so much. Rushmore was where Murray started perfecting his melancholy old guy persona that he has delivered so well in the last 20 years.
While it’s not a typical coming-of-age film, Rushmore has all the hallmarks, just with that Wes Anderson flavor. The yearbook montage near the beginning is a perfect test to see if his movies are for you. If you can’t tell, his movies are absolutely for me, and Max is one of my favorite high school characters. Something about his enthusiastic lust for life is so contagious, even if you sense there is a sad reason he busies himself with all those activities. Like all good coming-of-age films, we empathize while watching Max struggle to figure out his life.
Streaming TV Corner
The Office Episode of the Week
Billy: “The Convention” (Season 3, Episode 2)
“I love inside jokes. I hope to be a part of one someday” — Michael Scott
There is not a joke that encapsulates Michael Scott better than this one. A lonely man reaching out for friendship while not realizing he has friends all around him. In this episode we see Michael, Dwight, Jim, Josh, and Jane meet up at a paper convention. A hilarious dick-swinging competition happens the entire episode, but as always, Michael is oblivious to the reason they are there, to make sales. While at the same time he is making the most sales out of all of them. This episode is not only hilarious, but is the best episode for understanding Michael Scott. And for that reason it is one of my favorites.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please pass it along to a friend, share it on social, or shout it from the nearest mountaintop. We’d appreciate it.
If you’d like to read past newsletters, hit up our archive.