Mid90s
A24 | Release Date: October 19, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
14
Negative:
1
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattOct 10, 2018
He (Hill) makes Mid90s resonate with universal poignancy and electric energy; his kids are the best, messiest kind of real, and they’re alright. Read full review
91
ConsequenceSarah KurchakSep 14, 2018
As a writer and director, Hill demonstrates an endearing and encouraging empathy for his characters, crafting a portrait of adolescence that allows every emotion and every decision — from the most relatable at any age to the most boneheaded — to exist without irony, judgement, or condescension. Read full review
90
Film ThreatLorry KiktaOct 25, 2018
Go see this movie. Take your pre-teen who’s going through an awkward phase to see it (if you let them watch stuff with bad language and underage drinking, I should say). Or if you were a kid who came of age in the actual mid 90’s, this will give you an aching nostalgia for your youth. Read full review
90
IGNRafael MotamayorSep 17, 2018
Jonah Hill's impressive directorial debut Mid90s is full of heart, fun and a sense of longing to belong somewhere. Read full review
90
VarietyOwen GleibermanSep 11, 2018
Mid90s, though made by a Hollywood star, isn’t a nostalgic indie “fable” in gritty skate-punk drag. It’s something smaller and purer: a slice of street life made up of skittery moments that achieve a bone-deep reality. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeSep 11, 2018
A gender-flipped sibling to Crystal Moselle's Skate Kitchen (set in Los Angeles versus that film's NYC), its narrative of sudden belonging and onrushing perils mirrors that Sundance entry. But in emotional punch and shoulda-seen-this-coming skill, it is more like Hill's Lady Bird, a gem that feels simultaneously informed by its author's adolescence and the product of a serious artist's observational distance. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzSep 11, 2018
Mid90s doesn't feel like a recreation of an era so much as a lost artifact of the time. There's one predictable and regrettable narrative beat toward the end, but otherwise Hill has crafted a debut that will last a lifetime. Read full review
83
IndieWireEric KohnSep 11, 2018
Hill’s story suggests equal parts “Freaks and Geeks,” “Kids,” and the adolescent-focused narratives of British director Shane Meadows, but Hill cribs from these precedents with a confidence that injects this lively snapshot of skateboarding reprobates with fresh confidence. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 11, 2019
After its slight 85 minutes had passed, I wasn’t immediately sure how much of it had mattered. It was a lovely, strangely reassuring feeling. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerApr 8, 2019
Mid90s is funny, observant and true. If the Wu Tang Clan and Ren & Stimpy references don’t resonate, the portrait of finding your people and them schooling you in the world will. Swear-y and lovely in equal measures. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicKerry LengelOct 25, 2018
Hill isn’t offering a sociological treatise. Mid90s is all about lived experience. It’s about a place and a time and offers little inkling of its characters’ futures. Read full review
80
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottOct 24, 2018
The result is a simple film -- one that doesn’t try to do too much from a story standpoint, perhaps to its detriment -- but one that has a definite sense of time and place. Every step of the way, it feels honest and genuine. In this case, that makes all the difference. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganOct 18, 2018
Whether Hill’s debut as a writer-director is drawn entirely, or partly, from personal experience seems a moot point: there’s a sufficient clear-eyed skill to the project to elevate it out of the memoir arena and mark the actor out as a directing talent to watch. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyKristen Yoonsoo KimOct 18, 2018
Mid90s, for all its darkness, is uplifted by its hilarious moments and joyous skating shots. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiam LaceyNov 1, 2018
In the end, Hill is inclined to land closer to the heartfelt teen dramas of S.E. Hinton (The Outsiders, Rumblefish) than the docudrama grittiness he affects. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperOct 25, 2018
For most of the ride, Mid90s feels like an accurate time capsule — and a relatable journey even if you’ve never been on a skateboard in your life. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisOct 24, 2018
This is one of those rare films nowadays that might have been helped with a few extra minutes. Yet at the same time, that’s a clear sign that Hill has created a world and a set of characters that have kept us engaged throughout. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTom RussoOct 24, 2018
It’s as if Hill took his familiar sly humor and sneaked it into a segment from Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood.” Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerOct 15, 2018
What Hill hasn’t yet mastered, despite considerable skill as a first-time filmmaker, is how to impose a narrative more quietly, especially in finding the right ending. He also doesn’t seem to fully trust his sense of humor. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottOct 18, 2018
Like its hero, Mid90s struggles to figure out what it wants to be, and the struggle makes it interesting as well as occasionally frustrating. Read full review
70
Rolling StonePeter TraversOct 16, 2018
Near the end, Hill boxes himself into a sentimental corner that takes a little off the film’s edge. But before that, Mid90s bristles with fun, feeling and the exhilaration that comes with risking life’s hairpin turns. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleOct 25, 2018
Here Hill makes his debut as a filmmaker while trying to prove himself as the voice for an entire generation. And there are even times where Hill succeeds, navigating his own missteps as a first-time filmmaker to create a promising – albeit unsatisfactory  –  story of adolescent millennial angst. Read full review
67
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 13, 2018
It’s as though Hill wrote a much longer script and decided to ultimately pare everything down without realizing just how hollow he was rendering supporting players in the process. Read full review
65
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanOct 18, 2018
Hill’s made an unabashed love letter to a particular decade, sure, but also to a specific moment in everyone’s life. And while he undercuts his own movie by romanticizing even the most extreme experiences of lost innocence, the purity of Stevie’s longing makes the movie’s wistful fantasy understandable. Read full review
64
Paste MagazineDom SinacolaNov 1, 2018
Where Hill’s characters fill every frame with warmth and empathy, the world they inhabit is as contrived as a memory one trusts too much. Read full review
63
Washington PostAnn HornadayOct 25, 2018
Mid90s” is often painful to watch as Stevie puts himself through the punishing rituals of proving his street bona fides. But Hill takes even the most treacherous dangers in stride, suffusing his story with as much tenderness as stark terror. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesKatie WalshOct 25, 2018
The film is an achievement in authentic world-building, but you can’t shake the feeling that what Mid90s does say isn’t perhaps what Hill intended it to. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 22, 2018
Mid90s becomes, in full flower, a movie with characters more interesting or unusual than its very conventional story and setting, not a bad film so much as an incomplete one. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comSheila O'MalleyOct 19, 2018
The strength of Mid90s lies in its small observations about a very tight sub-culture, and what that sub-culture provided its most devoted adherents. Read full review
63
Film Journal InternationalNick SchagerOct 18, 2018
Better than mid90s’ treatment of adults is its evocation of the euphoria that comes from discovering one’s place in the world, and confidence—highlighted by Stevie’s nerve-wracked first sexual experience—as well as the way skating provides a liberating release, and a surrogate family, for these unruly teens. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 12, 2019
I enjoyed it more when Hill showed a lighter touch. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfOct 18, 2018
The movie is nostalgia, pure and simple, unfettered by examination. Even its title is fuzzy and vague. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangOct 18, 2018
Mid90s possesses just enough sensitivity and feeling to make you wish it had more. Hill’s script aims for, and often achieves, a fleeting, fragmentary portrait of group dynamics, but it’s stymied in its attempts to distinguish Stevie’s pals as individuals rather than types. Read full review
55
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsNov 1, 2018
What works best about Mid90s is what’s casual about it—but what makes it verge on being genuinely original is all the weirdo stuff at the margins, which is too pronounced to be subtext and too minimally handled to really mean something to the movie. Read full review
55
The AtlanticDavid SimsOct 17, 2018
In its quietest scenes, Mid90s feels a little more authentic, and Hill may well turn out to have a growing talent for directing. But he needs to match his subtler insights to a script that feels less derivative. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJake CoyleOct 31, 2018
A pair of other recent films — “Minding the Gap,” ″Skate Kitchen” — better explored the camaraderie and freedom of skater culture. But there are glimpses here of a more radiant, lyrical film. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 26, 2018
Vivid in bits and pieces, Mid90s feels like a research scrapbook for a movie, not a movie. The more Hill throws you around in the name of creating a harsh, immediate impression, the more the impressions blur. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriOct 19, 2018
The not-so-good news is that Mid90s never quite manages to make an impact, in part because it gives us so little to hang onto with the characters onscreen. Read full review
50
The PlaylistJason BaileySep 11, 2018
Hill’s basically remaking Larry Clark’s seminal 1995 film “Kids,” a picture inherently more authentic because it was a snapshot taken in that moment. And if you prefer the rose-colored lens of nostalgia, that’s been done too, in Jonathan Levine’s 2008 effort “The Wackness.” Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansApr 15, 2019
The attempts at authentic stoner dialogue soon become tedious, with too little plot or character development grounding the inanity (Hill’s self-written script also features an eyebrow-raising overuse of the N-word). Read full review
40
CineVueNick HiltonApr 12, 2019
In the end, Mid90s is harmless and, at times, funny and charmingly nostalgic. But unless you’ve spent the last 25 years lamenting the loss of VHS, Super Nintendo and Nirvana – or are a manic Katherine Waterston completist – then there’s no real need to see this film. Read full review
40
SlateSam AdamsOct 25, 2018
It certainly doesn’t work in Mid90s’ favor that it is the third movie released in the past two months to focus on an outsider with a turbulent home life seeking out community in the world of skateboarding. Even without the unflinching documentary "Minding the Gap" and the sure-handed docufiction "Skate Kitchen," Mid90s would feel phony, but the former’s understated and thoughtful treatment of its protagonists’ real-life tragedies contrasts sharply with Hill’s attempts to wring pathos from his manufactured ones. Next to them, Mid90s just looks like a poser. Read full review
40
The GuardianJordan HoffmanOct 18, 2018
There are scenes that snap together nicely with some sharp and nuanced observations. But the film is saddled with uninteresting surface-level characters. There’s a phoniness exuding from the entire project, made all the more discouraging since the plot-light, shaggy dog story is trying to feel so real. Read full review
40
ScreenCrushBritt HayesSep 26, 2018
Unfortunately, Mid90s isn’t anything you haven’t already seen numerous times before. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineJake ColeSep 13, 2018
Jonah Hill constantly falls back on providing vague justification for his characters' behaviors, along with spoonfuls of sentiment to let the more dour moments go down easier. Read full review
More From This Movie

66 Critic Reviews

7.6 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL