‘I hear you’re a musician?’
I’m not a camper. While I love hiking, I also love arriving in a lovely, country pub with a fire and a dog where I can eat a hearty meal and rest my head. I hate knocking mud encrusted metal pegs into rock hard ground. I hate not knowing the best place to put my muddy hiking boots to keep the tent clean. I hate headtorches. I hate all of it. True Adolescents is a film about other people that hate camping. I approve this message…
Sam Bryant (Mark Duplass) is going through a tough time. His girlfriend has kicked him out. His band are playing shows to six people. The relatives that he is forced to live with view him with a mixture of pity and disdain. The last thing Sam needs is an enforced camping trip with his apathetic cousins Oliver (Bret Loehr) and Jake (Carr Thompson), and yet, a camping trip is what he gets.
This super low budget indie movie has been on my watchlist forever due to the fact that Mark Duplass is generally a seal of quality. And so it goes with this too. True Adolescents is a film where not much happens, but it’s a film with warmth, and emotion, and one that I enjoyed a lot. Writer-director Craig Johnson has a real feel for his characters, and both Duplass and Loehr imbue their world with a lived in quality. Everyone knows a dreamer like Sam. I might have been a Sam myself once upon a time. And everyone knows a moody teenager like Oliver. Indeed, I work with them everyday.
True Adolescents is a small film that deals with big emotions. It took me a long time to find it, but it was worth seeking out. It also has a wonderful soundtrack. A film with all the feels.