[Music] when i was a kid i wanted to be a skater so bad like would wear fat ass vans play a bunch of tony hawks underground too and made my first email skating dude kind of bad but i never really put the time in to like get good at it i sure loved thinking about it and dabbled in it a little bit as a kid but ended up spending most of my free time with action figures video games and going to the movies really the furthest into it i ever got was like using my longboard
to cruise around my hometown sometimes also i wasn't really a 90s kid i was born on the very tail end of the 90s sure but my childhood was entirely spent in the 2000s and 2010s so it would just be plain false to call myself a 90s kid all that said when i watched mid 90s for the first time i couldn't help but feel nostalgic for this time period and lifestyle that i was frankly never even a part of in the film our main character stevie goes down a path of learning to skate with a bunch
of older kids smoking cigarettes doing drugs going to parties drinking you know basically all the staples of 90s skate culture i on the other hand was raised in a pretty typical suburban fashion i mean i grew up in hawaii so sure that elevated it to a certain extent but ultimately american suburbia stays pretty consistent even on a tropical island so yeah i wouldn't exactly say my childhood was similar to stevie's like at all other than maybe the video game part and yet this movie still manages to have this emotional stranglehold over me and after revisiting
the film and really sifting through my thoughts i think i finally managed to figure out why what i think allows this movie to emotionally resonate with more than just skater kids who grew up in the 90s there's a manner in which the film wears its heart on its sleeve and how it tackles and expresses its core themes of the pain of growing up [Music] so jonah hill yes that jonah hill directed and wrote this movie and as a result a lot of it is based on his childhood experiences and the culture he grew up around
in 90s la and man props to jonah here because he and the a24 crew really put a [ __ ] ton of work into making sure this genuinely felt like a time capsule of the 90s for starters the movie was shot on super 16 millimeter film and in a 4x3 aspect ratio in order to give it this very grainy and naturalistic feel as if you were watching an old vhs of someone's childhood and if you've seen it already i'm sure you already know this does wonders for the film the other step taken to make sure
this film came off as a genuine expression of the time period is the fact that rather than finding professional actors for the roles of the main friend group jonah hill went out and found real skaters in la and taught most of them how to act instead which is arguably an easier task than teaching a bunch of actors how to skate at least in a way that would come off as genuine on camera well okay technically sunny suljic who plays stevie had acting experience already but jonah hill didn't even know that when he found him he
was just hanging out at the skatepark one day now sure these kids had to learn how to skate and talk more like 90s skaters but outside of that they're the real deal man they already know all about the deeper meaning that skating holds and that shines through in their performances and you can tell jonah hill isn't putting up a front when it comes to his love for skating either i mean he dedicates an entire scene of the movie to rey putting together a new skate deck for stevie and it's shot so intimately and with so
much care that there's no way this dude doesn't have a deep love for skating another integral element that jonah hill nails in this film is his use of music the soundtrack for this movie consists of only four original tracks made by trent rezner and atticus ross who are so talented i'll probably give them their own video at some point every single one of the four tracks are utilized perfectly throughout the film whether it be capturing the quiet nostalgia of being a kid and secretly shifting through your older siblings room or the more dramatic feeling of
a rift being created in your friend group the rest of the soundtrack however consists of the songs that jonah hill grew up on and were pretty intertwined with so-called skate culture at the time you've got your far side your tribe called quest your herbie hancock you're more morrissey don't worry we'll get to that later but again the choices made for the soundtrack here just make this film such a genuine expression of jonah's childhood experiences even though nothing in the movie is a direct reference to a situation he went through the entire thing just oozes a
love and kind of sad nostalgia for the era and that's in no small part due to the main theme jonah hill focuses on for this movie [Music] at its core mid 90s is a film about the trials and tribulations of growing up or in the case of stevie his journey from an innocent kid who's into tmnt and plays nes into a man and along with this transition comes the pervasive feeling that we all get in adolescence that all of our problems are the worst things in the world that no one else understands us that we
want to break free and become our own person and stop being treated like a child and that now we've got to start thinking about what our lives are going to be like once the predictability of school leaves us free falling in the real world everyone in the main cast of friends is going through this in one way or the other but throughout all of that skating is the one thing that acts as a comforting escape for these kids when life gets to be too much what kicks this journey off for stevie is expressed briefly and
effectively in this quick scene where stevie sees a pair of kids closer to his age having a water gun fight in the la summer heat but his attention is quickly grabbed by a group of skaters being delinquent s [ __ ] [ __ ] desert storm before you [ __ ] [ __ ] go back inside your father [ __ ] you and after stevie starts sort of silently hanging around them enough ruben takes stevie under his wing perhaps to move himself up in the pecking order but regardless after some time stevie officially becomes part
of the group even getting his own nickname in the process from here stevie is plunged head first into the 90s skate lifestyle which yeah on its surface involves a lot of things 13 year old kids probably shouldn't be doing but underneath all that 90s skate culture was really about one thing freedom whether it's freedom from your personal or familial problems the freedom to test your limits and creativity with skating itself or even freedom from things like class barriers i mean at its core skate culture is very anti-establishment and as a result you tend to get
a really diverse mix of people from all types of backgrounds all bonding over this one hobby and of course jonah hill never missing a beat manages to highlight this aspect as well with the courthouse scene [Applause] in this lifestyle everyone's on the same level and thus everyone deserves the same amount of respect and that's what makes this moment between rey [ __ ] [ __ ] fourth grade and this homeless man really shine their conversation really gets to the core of what skating meant to the people in this time period yeah but i still got
the old programming in me i guess from school i'm thinking about a lot of stuff out here i understand why we ride a piece of wood while we push on just a piece of wood like what that does to somebody's spirit you know also quick aside the homeless dude is played by dell the funky homo sapien which is just it's awesome that jonah hill was able to get him for this anyways as the film continues stevie's newfound lifestyle begins to create more and more conflict at home with both his brother ian and mother and while
yeah a lot of this conflict is caused by his brother and mother's concern for who he's spending his time with and you know the drugs drinking and stealing money from his mom's stuff on stevie's end i think a lot of his rebellious behavior towards them is due to the fact that he's hitting that point in life where he's finally starting to just see his mom and brother as other people they're just as flawed as anyone else while stevie ultimately does look up to his brother as evidenced by the opening of the movie he also clearly
fears him as they don't have the healthiest relationship obviously for about the first half of the movie ian treats stevie pretty horribly refusing to ever share anything with him from orange juice to music beating on him whenever he steps out of line and he's not even able to muster a thank you when stevie goes out of his way to get him a tape for his birthday but after this moment where his brother [ __ ] out of fighting [ __ ] [ __ ] it weakens him in stevie's eyes and stevie starts to see his
brother for who he really is a lonely dude that generates this false facade of a tough guy and channels all his angst and anger into working out listening to music and beating on his little brother and in a similar fashion stevie begins to see his mom as a flawed person too while stevie did seem to get a much better upbringing from his mom than ian did it's still obvious stevie's mom has some trouble on where to draw the line as a parent like in the beginning of the movie stevie's mom is venting about her dating
life to her 13 and 17 year old son i wouldn't necessarily call that emotionally mature parent behavior stevie also later learns that when ian was a kid their mom used to bring over dates and sleep with them all while ian could hear can't imagine that does great things for your child either all of this built up conflict comes to a head the night stevie gets the most high and drunk he's ever been and also after the only scene in this movie that i hate because of how uncomfortable it is if you've seen the movie you
probably know exactly what i'm talking about so i'm not gonna get into it so stevie gets home ian notices how clearly [ __ ] up he is and actually shows some level of concern that is until stevie unfiltered by the drugs and alcohol starts talking [ __ ] back to ian and their biggest confrontation they've had yet breaks out this of course results in stevie's mom dragging him to the skate shop the next morning outraged stevie's friends reacts about how you'd expect say goodbye stevie this is the last time you're coming here hey but baby
what's your number though stevie mom you're not taking that down you're not taking that down and then all of stevie's embarrassment resentment and anger come out at once shut the [ __ ] up hey you shut up shut the [ __ ] up shut up shut up i just won and like let me be clear stevie's definitely being a little [ __ ] to his mom right now but i'd be lying if i said i couldn't relate to that feeling of being embarrassed in front of your cool friends like that and then taking out all
your embarrassment and anger on someone who was just trying to look out for you but it's here where my favorite part of this film starts as stevie vents out all his frustrations in the back of the skate shop rey comes out and sits with him for stevie nothing could be worse than how he feels right now but rey hits him with this piece of knowledge a lot of the time we feel that our lives are the worst but i think if you looked at anybody else's closet you wouldn't trade your [ __ ] for their
[ __ ] ray then tell stevie about what everyone else is dealing with to put stevie's own issues in perspective and then tells the story about how a few years ago his little brother passed away and during that time where he was really depressed it was [ __ ] [ __ ] who dragged him out of the house to go skate and so so let's go [Music] come on [Music] how sad are we and how sad have we been this man this is what the movie is really about and is its most powerful scene in
my opinion and it accomplishes quite a bit while it definitely tugs at your heartstrings to just see this very loving friendship grow between stevie and rey it simultaneously reveals what skating provides for everyone in the group for reuben skating is an escape from his abusive mother back home for fourth grade it's an escape from his impoverished lifestyle but is also a vehicle that lets him exercise his filmmaking skills even though he's afraid he's too dumb to pursue directing for [ __ ] [ __ ] i think skating is an escape from the fact that he
feels directionless and as a result he begins to rely a bit too heavily on drugs alcohol and partying to escape from all that as well as for rey skating helped him out of one of the roughest parts of his life and it's now something he is trying to pursue and do professionally for the rest of his life this scene is also able to hit home the point that yeah when you're a kid every problem you run into can feel like it's the end of the world but it's important to remember that everyone has their own
[ __ ] going on and not as a means to invalidate your problems but just to put them in perspective what's amazing is we get all of this insight in the span of like three minutes and none of it feels like force exposition or anything like that we already have moments in the movie hinting towards every character's situation and it just feels perfectly natural that our characters would be revealing all of these things during this specific moment together lastly i want to touch on the movie's ending a bit as people are often either disappointed by
it or think it fits perfectly basically after we watch the friend group's conflicts hit their breaking point with stevie and ruben fighting over the resentment reuben has slowly been building towards stevie and rey and fuckshit having a rift over the direction of their futures leaving them to both kind of resent each other everyone is left at their lowest point [ __ ] [ __ ] tries to drunkenly get everyone to get in his car to go to a party and reluctantly and stupidly everyone gets in and while rey is trying to convince fuckshit to take
them home a car hit what the [ __ ] we get in the door the scar on my arm from when i was in a car accident with all my friends and then that happens and it kind of corrects you you know because something's so severe happening you kind of like understand you can't mess around as much and you've got to take things like more seriously yeah yeah stevie thank god ends up living with only a badly broken arm to show for it he wakes up to find ian waiting on his bedside with an orange
juice for the both of them symbolizing in a subtle way that ian is sorry for his behavior still loves stevie and wants to finally start sharing parts of his life with him then stevie's mom comes out to the lobby to find that the friend group had stayed in the hospital overnight while they wait on stevie in spite of all the anger stevie's mom holds towards them she's able to finally see that these are true friends to stevie not just random delinquents he's hanging out with and so as a gesture of peace she asks them if
they'd like to see him the friend group gathers around stevie and gawks at pictures of his messed up arm reuben even musters some words of sympathy then fourth grade shows them a skating video he put together it plays and the movie ends now at an hour and 25 minutes mid 90s is a pretty brisk movie and for a lot of people the ending came a bit too quick and didn't wrap up his character arcs as much as it could have i used to be in this camp after watching it for the first time in theaters
i left thinking damn i really like this movie a lot but it ended so abruptly however with time i came to realize that's kind of the point now hold on i know this sounds like a really pretentious film bro take but hear me out the whole time this movie has been predominantly acting as this time capsule look back into a 13 year old kid's life in the 90s so what better way to end the movie than to end it realistically what i mean by this is in real life we don't get these perfectly tied up
with a bow kind of endings there isn't an end at all really not till we're dead i guess and over these last four years i think i've really come to appreciate how jonah hill executed the ending character arcs are tied up but just very subtly like ian going from always trying to keep stevie away from his room and orange juice to finally sharing one with him at the end or the fact that ruben stayed to look in on stevie signaling that the rift in their friendship will begin to heal with a couple extra scenes showing
them all hanging out together afterwards had been nice maybe but that's also exactly what 4th grade skate film is meant to give us for the ending and i think that works just fine or even great as a way to keep that more realistic ending intact there's not always going to be a perfectly crafted conversation that lays out someone's apology or wrongdoings especially before you're an adult and a lot of times after too sometimes it's just people's actions that signal that change and that's exactly what i think jonah hill was going for we all go through
a lot of [ __ ] as kids sometimes we deal with it and learn from it sometimes not but life just kind of keeps going and soon enough all that's left are faded fuzzy yet fond memories of the good and the bad that we can't help but to miss [Music] you
