The funny thing about growing up, in the way that all punky teenagers tend to do, is that the anxiety-ridden tales of doing so are all largely the same. All defined by the same inconsequential uncertainties, heartbreaks, and consuming worries about the future and their place in it. Yet while these stories are all connected by this shared similarity, that doesn’t mean that movies about this stage in life all have to fall into the trap of feeling the same as the rest of the Young Adult movies. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens in the hip and youth-aimed drama Kids in Love.
An uninventive yet eye-pleasing story of across-the-pond youths being youthful, Kids in Love distances itself from its peers by quite nicely capturing the real look and feel of this self-important time of millennials growing up – credit that to it’s cooly casual screenplay (penned by two youths themselves who also show up as part of the bratty pack) and its steady musical score. If Kids in Love feels largely unoriginal, it at least gets the tone and feel just right.
Kids in Love doesn’t so much follow kids being in love as it does one kid, Jack (Will Poulter) – and not so much his being in love as his being a confused and anxious mess in the days after graduating high school and before the soul-draining world of Law School. It’s pretty much as cliché as you’d think, including how his safely lived life is (you guessed it) upended when a beautiful pixie girl Evelyn (Alma Jodorowsky, granddaughter of film director Alejandro Jodorowsky) whisks him away from a volunteering gig to a night of costumes and dancing. She introduces him to the likes of such free-spirited friends as Voila (Cara Delevingne) who all dance around and smoke cigarettes in not one, but many of the film’s music-driven montages. From there, it follows as familiar a storyline of turning away from his once-accepted responsibilities to pursue fun, his friends, and love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16Smpsx13Ao
Kids in Love may have a tougher time connecting with their target demographic of “kids” since it’s really only the brooding Will whose story of confliction we are drawn to (again, screenwriters are two young chaps themselves). Perhaps Will getting closer to the exotic and alluring Parisian and taking pictures is a story, but it’s all so tepid and singular that it’s a bit of a mis-sell.
If you can forgive the lack of original storytelling and instead are looking for a pleasant hour and a half of watching attractive young people frolic through life, then Kids in Love will certainly satisfy. To that end, this movie is as real and affecting as it is the sulky teenager who may spring to watch it.
‘Kids in Love’ is not rated. 87 minutes. Now available on demand.
