But before any of that, Orley flashes back to six years\nearlier, when Mo (Griffin Gluck) was just a ten-year-old, the oft-babysat third\nwheel of his teenage sister Kate (Emily Arlook) and her boyfriend Zeke (Pete\nDavidson). Mo sees Zeke as the big brother he never had, who takes him on\nroller coasters and into R-rated movies, so when Kate and Zeke break up, Mo\nstill wants to hang out with Zeke. The older boy keeps him around, through the\nyears, as a kind of a mascot; Mo keeps hanging around because Zeke and his\ndirtbag friends offer a sense of belonging that he doesn\u2019t get from his peers.\nAlso, they let him drink and smoke and stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most striking element of Orley\u2019s wise screenplay is how\nthoroughly he\u2019s worked through this central relationship \u2013 the multiple layers\nof admiration, dependency, and affirmation that it offers, to both of these\nyoung men. There\u2019s no question that it\u2019s a real friendship, that they feel\nhonest affection for each other, but there\u2019s also an element of self-promotion;\nMo hangs out with Zeke because he thinks Zeke is cool, and Zeke lets him\nbecause, as a 23-year-old jobless burnout, he needs to be around someone who\nthinks he\u2019s cool. But as the picture progresses, Zeke starts to get an idea of\nthe kind of person he could end up being. And since Mo wants to be like Zeke,\nhe begins seeing it too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nNot that such futuristic concerns are top of mind; one of Big Time Adolescence<\/em>\u2019s best qualities is\nhow acutely it captures the \u201ctomorrow doesn\u2019t matter, let\u2019s do this\u201d nature of\nthe teenage years (most succinctly, perhaps, in the moment when Mo explains to\nthe girl he likes, as he prepares to jump out of a window with a duffel bag\nfull of drugs, \u201cThis isn\u2019t me, I swear!\u201d) Yet unlike most teen party comedies,\nthe picture is willing to wrestle with the gravity and consequences of those\nreckless decisions \u2013 yet somehow dodging the trapdoor of addressing them in a\npreachy, After School Special kind of way. These years are messy and difficult,\nand even the best teen movies can rarely resist tying thing up with pretty\nlittle bows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Orley occasionally succumbs to that temptation as well;\nthere\u2019s some business with a recent ex that feels more than a little contrived,\nand one wishes he\u2019d given more dimension to more than a single adult character.\nBut that character, Mo\u2019s dad, is played with a proper mix of helplessness and\nbarely-contained rage by Jon Cryer, very good as a man who\u2019s working so<\/em> hard at doing and saying the right\nthings, and mostly failing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Big Time Adolescence <\/em>arrives on the very weekend that Pete Davidson\u2019s first studio vehicle, Judd Apatow\u2019s King of Staten Island<\/em>, was set to debut at SXSW. It would\u2019ve been quite the coming-out party, but as it is, this Hulu release makes a fine case for Davidson as a film star \u2013 he\u2019s very funny, sure, but he also puts across the character\u2019s contradictions, flipping and mixing Zeke\u2019s brio and insecurity. And Glick, though mostly playing the straight man, is a sturdy anchor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Orley is a funny but tricky writer, and in scene after scene, his ear for dialogue is just right \u2013 it\u2019s natural but heightened, funny without sounding too \u201cwritten.\u201d That\u2019s a balance that some screenwriters spend entire careers trying to achieve; this is Orley\u2019s debut feature. I expect we\u2019ll hear plenty more from him in the years to come. ![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\nB+<\/h1>\n\n\n\n