Glasgow Film Festival: Mid90s review

If you are a fan of the TV series Spaced, you will remember a scene where Tim and Daisy bond over watching skate videos. Making increasingly more audible and physical reactions as the falls and hits as people fall off their boards get more and more extreme and intense.

This was the scene in the Glasgow Film Theatre during the Opening Gala UK premiere of Jonah Hill’s Mid90s.

They were one voice reacting with uproarious laughter one minute and shock and horror the next as the lead character Stevie (played by Sunny Suljic and based only slightly autobiographically on Hill), learns to face what life throws at him, whether that be ollies, grinds, girls or punches; pick himself up and get back on the board.

It is a testament to Jonah Hill’s directorial debut that if you didn’t know, you would believe that Mid90s was made in the Mid 90s.

Shot entirely on 16mm, it has the look and feel of the skate videos that the character of Fourth Grade wants to produce.

Soundtracked by some of the period’s greatest hits (who didn’t have a copy of Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged gig on at every gathering?), Hill showcases some real talent behind the camera. Particularly during a house party scene that features some Superbad use of editing and camerawork. Now that is superbad meaning good of course, as was the vernacular in the Nineties.

There is a rawness to the film that is reminiscent of Larry Clark’s Kids. Although not as extreme or exploitative, it is honest in its portrayal of what the youth culture was engaging in at the time.

Mid90s is about finding your place in this world and Jonah Hill may have found his place in the industry. Albeit a future where he is behind the camera instead of in front of it.

4 stars