Knicks Morning News (2025.04.17)

Given Leon runs a leak-proof shop, wonder if “hands off Dolan” is strictly true.

It’s not even close to true. He’s also meddling with the Rangers.

Now, to Adolescence, currently having something of a talk of the town moment. (*) No spoilers.

1. Technically outstanding. First-rate acting, and the “one-take” idea worked swimmingly, evoking the discordant jumble of emotions and confusions of the characters and context very well. I’d even go so far as to say it evokes adolescence itself.

2. Does an admirable job positing social media and the desire for attention and validation thereon as a potentially crippling feature of modern childhood and adolescence.

3. With that said, ultimately the purpose of drama is to tell a compelling story about humans and here … not so great. Indeed, it lost me plot/story-wise maybe halfway in for a very fundamental reason: the protagonist boy is nowhere near homely enough to be a bullied “incel.” In fact, I’d make it no worse than a coin flip that he’s a future member of the “20%.” That flaw pretty much ruined things — much like when Daenerys Targaryen brought out the dragons as a weapon of war far too late in Game of Thrones when they were seen to be so powerful that she could have wiped out her myriad enemies before the start of episode one and not bothered with all the rest.

4. This observation is one you won’t see much if at all from the critics; indeed, many would frown upon it (or worse), given the societal norm about overtly commenting on physical appearance. While I’m generally fine with the norm, it can’t be the norm in a drama where the story posits physical appearance and appeal as the indispensable fulcrum upon which the plot and the drama turns.

5. There’s also a fundamental thematic problem, going back at least to the days of Lenin, which we also see in things like The Substance, which is that it’s virtually an iron-clad law of the cosmos that anytime a work is overtly made to Illustrate and Bemoan an Important Problem with Society (TM), it’s doomed to fail artistically. Here, the Important Problem (TM) is “toxic masculinity” (TM), and the unavoidable didacticism with which the directors and producers go about their way is ultimately unconvincing and badly undercuts the art and the story. While it didn’t go to Substance lengths of pounding the heads of the audience with how very important the Important Problem was — over and over and over and over again — it still ultimately didn’t work.

Not the stuff for Art for Art’s Sake types, but as with The Substance, unsurprisingly very appealing to the universe of Metacritic-linked critics. My Metacritic “number” for it would be something like a 60 — which could easily have been worse.

(*) Our esteemed colleague reviewed it for Rolling Stone and even dropped in an asterisked footnote! I’d highly recommend a click-through read.