True Adolescents

Mark Duplass stars as Sam--a loser who, in his mid-30s, has no home and no job....but he is in a band! When he moves in with his aunt and her family, he mostly sits around doing nothing--that is, until he gets drafted into taking his 14 year-old cousin and his friend on a camping trip. Now considering all three have exactly the same maturity level, you know things can't go well with good 'ol Sam in charge! And, not surprisingly, that's exactly what happens. Can Sam somehow, for once, short some maturity and get them back safely? Or, will they be eaten by bears and squirrels and hippies in the Pacific Northwest?

This is an unusual film in many ways. It is NOT formulaic but at the same time I am sure a lot of folks WON'T like it very much because it does not have a happy ending. I respect it, however, because it avoided formula and because the filmmakers did a good job of actually capturing the essence of 14 year-olds. Instead of the Hollywood way where you get a 20-something to play a 14 year-old, these really WERE kids that age. And, they talked like kids that age--not like Hollywood versions of kids! I only recently retired from teaching and know how 14 year-olds talk--and they DO talk like the boys in "True Adolescents". Worth seeing even if the film seems very incomplete by its conclusion.

True Adolescents had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. It is a solid effort at exploring the efforts of a man in his mid-30s who hasn't quite grown up to bond with his teenage nephew and his buddy during a weekend camping outing. The characters are well-developed and the acting is solid. Mark Duplass's Sam is a failed musician who needs to figure out what he is doing with his life. His immaturity is finally challenged as he is forced to become the responsible adult. The story is entertaining if not spectacular. The acting is fairly good and the characters and their relationships to each other are well-developed. The ending sequence seems a little hokey. Although, the film probably won't get widely distributed, it is nevertheless a worthwhile effort.

Okay, I'm 15 and I picked this to watch with my parents cause I thought it looked funny and I figured I'd be able to relate to the teenagers in it. I was SO wrong.

The comic traits that are supposed to be laughable are just embarrassing. The characters are extremely underdeveloped and the script was obviously written by someone who's never spoken to a teenager before, because the 4 teenage characters acted like kids between the ages of 6 and 10. Even if the characters had been even relatively accurately portrayed, the acting in this movie is genuinely terrible.

Not worth the time to watch.

This quiet film stealthily approaches some rather profound questions about growing up, finding an identity, maturing, and developing a sense of responsibility—and it just kind of leaves them there, unanswered. That's not to say the film is without merit. Mark Duplass is perfectly cast as Sam, the 30something "true adolescent" who finds himself without a job, a girlfriend, or a home. While crashing at his aunt's place, he gets recruited to chaperone his cousin and his cousin's best friend on a camping trip. A silly prank in the middle of the trip accidentally uncovers a delicate moment, which propels much of the subsequent action of the film even as its importance remains marginalized and only tangentially alluded to as the movie progresses toward an inconclusive resolution. "True Adolescents" is what I would call a "problem film"—but one I enjoyed nonetheless (even though I still can't decide whether I actually like Mark Duplass).

I liked Mark Duplass quite a lot in "Humpday," and there are several moments in "True Adolescents" when you get a glimpse of what a good actor he has it in him to be. But what also struck me about his performance in this coming-of-age story was how unlikable he can be when paired with the wrong material.

He plays an immature musician, drifting through life and pissing off just about anyone who might be willing to tolerate him, until, bottomed out and crashing in his aunt's house, he agrees to take her son and his best friend on a camping expedition when the kid's father bails on him (for what, we are to understand, is the umpteenth time). While on that trip, something happens between the two teenagers that jeopardizes, and perhaps with dangerous results, their trip and forces Duplass into the role of adult, a role for which he is not overly suited.

We're supposed to think Duplass is a loser, and I suppose we're even supposed to get impatient with him, but I also think we're meant to find him funny and charming, and I just didn't. Some people have a knack for being snide and sarcastic while still being winning, and some don't. Guess which camp Duplass falls in for me? My viewing experience of "True Adolescents" wasn't at all helped by the fact that the Netflix streaming version I saw screwed up somewhere toward the end so that the picture and the soundtrack were operating entirely independently of one another, so maybe it's not fair of me to judge the film too harshly.

The cast includes Melissa Leo as Duplass's aunt, and makes me start to wonder if Leo, an actress I usually like very much, has decided that her best career move is to appear in absolutely any movie someone offers to her.

Grade: B-