Funny, sad 'I Like Movies' explores truths underneath big feelings
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Teenagers aren’t the only ones sometimes blinded by the things that make them feel seen. But that particular period of emotional anarchy likely ranks them first.
In “I Like Movies,” 17-year-old Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen) has such passion—such cinephilia—that nothing can compare, to the point where he claims that he doesn’t feel like himself if he doesn’t watch a movie every day. Growing up in a small town outside Toronto, Lawrence only wants to attend the Tisch School of the Arts in New York, where he anticipates a completely different life as a respectable filmmaker (not, ick, just “a Canadian filmmaker”), so much so that when his best friend Matt (Percy Hynes White) asks if he can come to New York Lawrence says he thinks he and Matt are probably just placeholder friends. Consciously this is merely a commentary on Lawrence’s film fixation; Matt doesn’t share it, and Lawrence can’t imagine anything serving him that isn’t in the spirit of his goal.
Less consciously, Lawrence and Matt have sleepovers and call their weekly “SNL” viewing “rejects’ night” and have a funny recurring gag in which they both choose what they’re doing when the opening “SNL” credits show them as cast members, but they’re not bonded in productive, supportive ways that matter. “I Like Movies,” set in 2002 in case the video store didn’t give away that we’re not dealing with the present day here, has a terrific understanding of how change happens, respecting what’s often a hard and painful process with an uncommon willingness to break through illusions.
Plotwise “I Like Movies” mostly involves Lawrence getting a job at Sequels Video and his dynamic with his boss Alana (Romina D’Ugo), as well as his tense relationship with his mom (Krista Bridges), informed by a tragedy years before. Certain elements in the script by writer-director Chandler Levack feel conventional, less coming-of-age staples than convenient inevitabilities. More often, though, the film brings unique vulnerability to its aching, confused ambition and awareness of toxicity and fantasy that usually go overlooked in the genre. There’s a real potency to its understanding about the heaviness of permanent things in fact being temporary, and vice-versa.
Here’s the part where maybe you’re thinking, “Of course a movie critic is going to like a movie called ‘I Like Movies’ about a kid who grows up obsessed with movies. So predictable.”
Was I predisposed to liking “I Like Movies” based on an adolescence in which pop culture felt exciting and personal? Absolutely. Did I laugh at so many points of this story that I wished I had been drinking something because of how many great spit takes would have been earned? Definitely.
But you don’t have to know who Martin Scorsese’s editor is or even to recognize the “Almost Famous” reference for “I Like Movies” to resonate as a story about how slow everything feels when you haven’t found your place yet. Featuring a handful of excellent performances, Levack’s film doesn’t broadly advocate for moderation or make easy claims about how art can be a crutch or a replacement for human interaction. (Though it doesn’t feel like Lawrence’s social avoidance lines up with his tastes in any particular way, arguably an oversight.)
Rather, there’s a complicated question about what sort of reality exists on and off the screen, what questions we should be asking on both sides, and what answers one provides about the other.
B+
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