With his directorial debut Mid90s, Jonah Hill seeks to shed his identity as a comedic actor, but his turn as a serious director feels more manufactured than authentic.

In a recent conversation with Kris Tapley on Variety’s Playback podcast, Jonah Hill says this of his directorial debut Mid90s: “This is me coming out as who I am.”

If you’ve been paying attention to Jonah Hill’s comments on the press tour for his new movie, you’ll know that this is not an isolated remark; since the movie’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Hill has made it crystal clear how personal this movie and its story is for him.

It’s confounding that Hill would stake such the overhaul of his public image on a film that lacks much of an identity whatsoever.

Mid90s follows Stevie (Sunny Suljic), a lonely 13-year-old living in 90s-era LA who makes friends with a group of skateboarders to escape from his troubled, occasionally violent, home life. Following Stevie as he moves from an outsider with zero skate skills to a respected member of the Motor Avenue skate shop, Mid90s traces a subtle coming-of-age arc onto the structure and pace of a slice-of-life drama.

Thoroughly entrenched in the atmosphere of a very specific moment in time as experienced by a very specific group of people, Mid90s is unconcerned with defining a clear narrative arc or dramatic tension.

Instead, Hill is quite content to let Mid90s play like a reel of childhood memories, hazy with nostalgia and youthful idealism. Despite lacking much of a story, Mid90s is best viewed as a depiction of the intimacy shared between teen boys.

The opening minutes of the film are some of its best, operating as both an introduction to Stevie the protagonist and Jonah Hill the director. Quickly establishing a visual style full of intimate close ups and gracefully staged one-takes while layering period-specific music choices with a phenomenal score (of only four songs) by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, it’s tempting to slip into the Mid90s nostalgia factory.

All of this nostalgia gets channeled through Stevie, bored and lonely, spending his days wandering an empty house and sneaking into his older brother’s room to listen to music. Seemingly desperate for companionship given the less than ideal relationships he has with both his brother Ian (Lucas Hedges) and mother Dabney (Katherine Waterston), Stevie looks elsewhere to find a place that feels like home.

After he sees a group of skaters on the street, Stevie pursues their companionship by simply hanging around them. Slowly but surely, with a little help from a joke about whether black people can get sunburns, the group of skaters adopt Stevie as one of their own.

If you’re wondering whether this moment is as hackneyed as it sounds, it is – and it’s not the only one. The poor, rather unimaginative script makes narrative jumps like Stevie’s induction into the group feel false, directly at odds with the authentic feel that Mid90s works so hard to capture.

However, this moment does give way to a meaningful depiction of the intimacy and companionship shared between young men; the desire for it, the struggle to earn it, and the difficulty of holding onto it.

At first, Stevie simply observes these skaters – some that go by their real names like Ray and Ruben, others with nicknames like Fuckshit and Fourth Grade. Stevie’s observations of the group allow him, and by extension the audience, to understand the social and emotional exchanges that occur between these young men. Only after Stevie becomes one of the group do we begin to see all the various ways that their age, emotional dispositions, and personal histories dictate their relationships with one another.

For example, at the beginning of the movie, Stevie becomes friends with Ruben, the youngest member of the group. It’s clear that Ruben is interested in Stevie insofar as Stevie improves Ruben’s status within the group by ensuring there is someone younger than him. Ruben tells Stevie that it’s “gay” to say thank you. He also encourages Stevie to smoke and brags about hooking up with girls.

On the other hand, Stevie’s relationship with Ray, the group leader, is far more intimate; Ray cares for Stevie, giving him a new skateboard, comforting him after Dabney embarrasses him in front of everyone, and encourages Stevie not to give up on himself.

Whereas Ruben sees Stevie as leverage to improve his status with the group, Ray sees Stevie as an opportunity to nurture and protect. These relationships are the best of what Mid90s has to offer, even if they are sketched in a rather rudimentary form.

Given how naturalistically these friendships begin and grow over time, it’s disappointing that Mid90s seems unable to take a stance either way on the inherent toxicity and competition embedded within male intimacy. Whether unable or unwilling, Hill fails to make the jump from a realistic portrayal to meaningful authenticity.

Sure, the movie shows what it was like to be a skater in LA in the mid-90s. Yes, the movie is full of characters and relationships that “feel” real. However, the credit for the success of all of this showing and feeling is owed to the film’s aesthetic choices, far more than its narrative ones.

Shot on Super 16 by cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt (The Bling Ring, Certain Women), the movie takes on the feel of a home movie that is meant to subtly drive home a feeling of realism – even if it’s unearned by the script.

Meanwhile, the editing by Nick Houy, who worked on last year’s phenomenal Lady Bird, gives the movie a strong and distinct rhythm that makes it easier to overlook the huge narrative blind spots that Hill leaves on the table.

A distinct visual look and editing style, combined with the film’s fantastic score and soundtrack choices, make up a strong veneer that holds together what little Mid90s has to offer. If nothing else, Mid90s proves that Jonah Hill is a successful aesthetician, even if he isn’t a particularly good storyteller.

Until the final act of the movie, Hill’s script offers little to no genuine conflict. It’s only in the last fifteen minutes that Mid90s shoehorns in some conflict that carries us to the finish line.

Much like Stevie’s induction into the group, the introduction of tension and conflict to the end of the story feels inauthentic. It genuinely feels like they had no idea how to end the movie so all at once they introduced enough conflict that would precipitate a violent moment (in this case, a car crash) that could bring everyone back together again.

Mid90s is a curious case of a movie that does almost everything right, so right in fact that it’s understandable that some might fall for its charms. Unfortunately, there’s such a palpable distance between the film’s aesthetic choices and the narrative ones that it’s hard not to walk away from Mid90s feeling cheated by all that it refuses to do.

So much of what might have given Mid90s a distinct identity is left ignored. Stevie’s relationship with his brother, one full of complicated feelings of anger and admiration expressed through bursts of violence and moments of camaraderie, is one of the more interesting elements in the film, yet it’s squeezed into the margins like a footnote.

Stevie’s mother Dabney is given little to no characterization of her own (save for when we learn from Ian that she used to have more men over for sex before Stevie was born). Even Stevie’s friends – including Ray and Fuckshit whose different of opinion on what it means to be happy and to work are – are left feeling like strangers at the end of the film.

Mid90s feels like a first draft of a story that is manufactured with precision, giving off the feeling of authenticity without any of the desperately needed depth. Mid90s is great nostalgia porn, but not a particularly good movie.