Metacritic reviews

Where Licorice Pizza was fun, bombastic spectacle of performances, I Like Movies is a more subtle, more human, more cohesive film with a devastating and distinctive point of view.

Levack has done a remarkable job with her feature-film debut, playing with tropes that have time-honoured traditions but are always in need of a refresh.

Making her feature debut, writer-director Chandler Levack has pulled off a rare trick here by making a movie that feels warm and safe without coddling its protagonist.

There remains a warmth and goofiness in Lehtinen’s performance that harks back to Napoleon Dynamite as much as it recalls such similarly themed bro pics as High Fidelity and Clerks. It’s enough to restore one’s faith in the near-extinct subgenre once known as the teen comedy.

It’s very easy to forgive this film for what it lacks, such as being shot on a minimal budget at dull locations. Some of the performances seem amateurish at times but because the story is one that has a universal appeal, they are overlooked in light of how relatable the whole concept is.

This is a film about moving on and growing up. This is well-traveled territory in terms of subject matter, and nothing on display is especially groundbreaking or new. And yet, there's a nostalgic charm here that is compelling, and the writing, direction, and acting are all so strong — and that counts for something.

Writer/director Chandler Levack finds uncommon honesty in this Canadian video store employee and those he chafes against, even if the coming-of-age story eventually falls into some of the more palatable pitfalls its strident star would rail against.

While I Like Movies‘ skewering of the entitlement, narcissism, and aggression that comes with being a 17-year-old is spot-on—and recognizes how cinema, maybe more than any other art form, draws angry, socially awkward young men into its orbit—one wishes it had something more interesting up its sleeve than treating film-bro myopia as placeholder for lack of a father figure.