Planning out my movies to review in January, I stumbled across the trailer for "When You Finish Saving the World" and was excited about the film. Out of the January releases, I thought it was the one I would appreciate the most. So imagine my surprise when I found myself coming away thinking it was fine, but not nearly as enjoyable as "M3gan" turned out to be.
Growing up is hard. Being grown up is even more difficult. Teens are rebellious. Overbearing mothers might push things too far. These are all prevalent themes in the film.
The story is adapted from a 2020 audio drama written by Jesse Eisenberg, who also serves as director for this film. In fact, it's his feature directorial debut. And for a first swing out of the gate (please forgive the malaphor), it's not a disappointing offering. It was just... hard for me to sit through. But so was "Women Talking," so I don't think that's a mark against "When You Finish Saving the World."
Julianne Moore plays a mother named Evelyn who works at a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse. Her son, Ziggy, is played by Finn Wolfhard. And I firmly believe Hollywood is just trying to get as many teen years out of him as possible before he's too old to play the part. Ziggy isn't the brightest, but he has a real talent for music. And stop me if you've heard this one before. He has a crush on a girl in his class.
As Ziggy will annoyingly cite several times throughout the film, he has 20,000 followers on a website where he livestreams musical performances from his bedroom. And he's apparently making a decent chunk of change while carrying around the typical teen fantasy of being famous one day, with people worshipping his music and lyrics.
It doesn't take long for the film to highlight the main cause of tension. Ziggy is a typical teenage boy with little concern outside of his crush and music, while Evelyn comes across as disinterested in his hobbies because they don't quite seem to match the lofty goals she wished her son would aspire to.
Oh, and Jay O. Sanders is present in some scenes as Roger, the patriarch of the family. Though he's so underutilized, he might as well not even be in the movie. His job is to regurgitate article summaries from the New Yorker while cooking, grumbling and reading. I told my wife, Meghan, as we watched the movie that he could have been plucked right out, and the story wouldn't miss him. And that's not Sanders' fault, mind you.
SPOTLIGHT ON ZIGGY, EVELYN
But the spotlight for most of the film is on Ziggy and Evelyn. And what they cannot find in their own relationship, they seek elsewhere.
Evelyn starts taking an interest in a teenage boy who came with his mother to live in the shelter. She quickly (and scarily) tries so hard to make him into a kind of surrogate son for herself. Moore's performance as she exacerbates the situation with this boy at the shelter is right on the money. But it was difficult to sit through scene after scene as she becomes an overbearing force on this poor kid who is just trying to survive an already stressful situation. I may have cringed until I nearly died closer to the film's end.
As for Ziggy, he works so hard to get the attention of this girl in his class named Lila (Alisha Boe). She's philosophical, writes poetry, and is clearly up to date on studies of geopolitical events. I'm convinced Ziggy doesn't actually have a huge crush on Lila, though I'm sure he thinks he does. Instead, what I think he's seeking from his classmate is the affirmation and recognition of talent he doesn't get at home.
Of course, Ziggy and Evelyn are more alike than either would care to admit, and they spend the entire movie missing cues and olive branches from each other because they're so busy looking for the attention they want in other places -- or rather, people.
FEELS LONGER THAN IT IS
"When You Finish Saving the World" somehow manages to feel longer than it actually is. The movie is only 88 minutes long. And I think that, including the character of Roger, is a detriment to the overall narrative.
There's nothing wrong with a short movie. I'm actually kind of tired of seeing movies flirt with the three-hour mark more and more. But "When You Finish Saving the World" seems to end just a few minutes early, robbing us of a payoff, a reward for cringing so hard as Ziggy and Evelyn make mistake after mistake. I found the ending to be a little flat.
And if Roger wasn't there, maybe we could have gotten more screen time between Evelyn and Ziggy to let us know exactly when their disconnects really reached a point of no return. Meghan made the argument that Roger was the neutral party inserted into the film to give us a barometer of the two extremes, Ziggy on one side and Evelyn on the other. She made the point that he's a victim we're made to empathize with. I believe she makes a great point, but for that to have worked, I feel like the film needed to develop and utilize Roger more.
There's a scene where both Evelyn and Ziggy come home to find him upset, sitting at the table in a suit. He informs them they forgot about his award ceremony where he was being presented with a lifetime achievement recognition. But it wasn't mentioned in any previous scenes. For that to have paid off and carried any emotional weight, we, the audience, should have been given something to hint that this important ceremony was coming up.
THE BEST PARTS
I think the best parts of this movie do come down to the performances of Wolfhard and Moore. They're clearly the highlight of the film. I'm not sure how much guitar playing and singing was Wolfhard and how much came from professional musicians being mixed in, but I thoroughly enjoyed his musical scenes.
One part features Ziggy putting music to Lila's poem, and it was my favorite scene in the whole movie. I couldn't stop smiling. While the latest "Ghostbusters" film may not have shown it, Wolfhard does have charisma when coupled with the right script.
On top of the performances from Wolfhard and Moore, "When You Finish Saving the World" boasts a wonderful score courtesy of Emile Mosseri. Nobody understood the assignment as well as Mosseri. Every piece of music included in this film was right on target in terms of theme and tone.
While I expected a little more from "When You Finish Saving the World," it still ends up succeeding thanks to its main leads and an accompanying score that brilliantly matches the project.
The film is in theaters.