But Forever in My Mind

This is a colorful, bright, energetic film, saturated with teenage ennui. It all comes rushing back at you, how everyday teenage life is the stuff of high drama, all the time, on all channels.

The framework is a student rebellion, and a subplot is the reactionary attitudes of one boy's parents, big players, evidently, in the student riots of '68. The teenagers' contempt for adult society is so automatic it's almost an institution. It's funny, and a little depressing, to watch these kids make the same stupid assumptions you did X number of years ago. You realize they're unavoidable, these rites of passage.

While it feels like a modern, Italian John Hughes movie, it delivers more than you'd expect from a movie so described. There are sharp, trenchant observations about life and what we expect from it. Some of the innocent questions a boy asks his older brother are so silly they're profound. I especially enjoyed the right-on portrayal of the boys being just as gossipy as the girls, if not more so.

I hadn't expected to like this movie as much as I did. It's sweet, funny, and worthwhile.