Turtles All the Way Down (2024)
Directed by: Hannah Marks
Premise: Based on the book by John Green. When a billionaire goes missing, a teenager with obsessive compulsive disorder (Isabela Merced) investigates the disappearance and falls for the billionaire’s son (Felix Mallard).
What Works: The strongest aspect of Turtles All the Way Down is the friendship between teenagers Aza and Daisy (Isabela Merced and Cree). They are working class teenagers navigating adolescence. Aza has obsessive compulsive disorder which makes her a bit of a drag while Daisy is upbeat and creative, often pushing her friend to action. The friendship between Aza and Daisy has a lot of credibility and actors Isabela Merced and Cree are fun to watch together. Merced also has a likable romantic chemistry with Felix Mallard. The two of them are picturesque in the way of models in a fashion catalog and Mallard has the appeal typical of male love interests in teen romances. Merced has an especially strong screen presence. Her character resists treatment for OCD while also dealing with the pressures inherent to adolescence and there is an ever-present agitation to her performance. Merced is given a big assist by the filmmaking. Turtles All the Way Down visualizes the spiraling and catastrophizing nature of anxiety, using sound and insert shots to put the audience in Aza’s headspace.
What Doesn’t: The story of Turtles All the Way Down is instigated by the disappearance of the boyfriend’s billionaire father. This premise doesn’t fit with the tone of the rest of the film and it is mostly abandoned throughout the picture, only to return in a ludicrous coincidence in the ending. The billionaire status of the boyfriend’s family is a weird choice and Turtles All the Way Down has some bizarre and occasionally grotesque displays of wealth; it’s reminiscent of the way the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy fetishized materialism. Love stories require some obstacle keeping the lovers apart. For most of Turtles All the Way Down that’s Aza’s OCD but it’s never insurmountable and the resolution of their romance makes no sense. The family disappearance and the boyfriend’s wealth are two elements among many that don’t fit with the rest of the story. Aza suffers an existential crisis and the film deal with philosophical themes for a while and then abruptly drops them. Some ideas and subplots are incomplete while others feel like they belong in some other movie. At other points the movie works through teen romance and friendship tropes.
Disc extras: Available on the Max streaming service.
Bottom Line: Turtles All the Way Down is an uneven film. The parts dealing with OCD and female friendship are quite strong but these scenes are sandwiched between a clunky romance and a silly mystery.
Episode: #1012 (September 8, 2024)