The 90s were all that, and so is this movie.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is a movie made for the 90s kid in all of us. The kind before streaming existed, TV’s source of children’s entertainment was expanding, and VHS tapes would be able to tape the shows you missed. You have to hit the record button on the VCR, of course. I know I had to push that button back then, and I love watching VHS openings on YouTube. So, it’s refreshing to try to bring back the style.
The movie has a darker edge that kind of reminded me of the hit Nickelodeon series “Are You Afraid of the Dark,” especially when it features a campfire in the woods, and quick cameos by Danny Tamberelli and Michael C. Maronna (A.K.A. Pete and Pete). But it’s a lot edgier and thought-provoking than our previous generation would digest things.
Justice Smith plays a lonely young man named Owen, who works at a movie theater and recalls on his youth in the late 90s when he came across a supernatural TV show, “The Pink Opaque.” It’s about girls fighting monsters, and airs at 10:30 PM, and it seems like the kind of show any kid or teen would go crazy for and eventually realize that it was junk food entertainment. It’s all about how different generations would view them.
Back when Owen was played by Ian Foreman, he has a terminally ill mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and a cruel stepfather (Frank Durst), and so his only friend is the troubled Lesbian ninth grader Maddie (Brigette Lundy-Paine), who introduces him to the show and has a terrible background.
She also has an abusive stepfather, and uses the show as escapism. I attended a special retrospective screening of Kevin Smith’s “Mallrats,” and I heard the story of a guy whose father beat him so badly, he used the movie to help him escape from his reality. I feel bad for that guy and for this movie girl, too, and it makes sense how they both refer entertainment over their own lives.
The minute she decides the two of them should run away from home, she disappears and “The Pink Opaque” gets cancelled. Years later, the girl returns and admits that she was literally in the show. Not acting in the studio, but actually inside the show. It’s the kind of fantasy that even Owen would have trouble believing.
Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (“We’re All Going to the World’s Fair”) and produced by husband and wife Dave McCray and Emma Stone, “I Saw the TV Glow” is a strange and weirdly affective movie that shows us two troubled characters and their connection to one bizarre teen series. And the performances from Smith and Lundy-Paine are mesmerizing in their own respective ways of viewing their realities and what are supposed to be fantasies. And being released by A24, it’s supposed to be a combination of both elements without typical dialogue tainting the studio’s reputation.
The last twenty minutes of the movie, however, didn’t appease me. In fact, it starts to get cynical and crazy, and I wasn’t able to follow on what goes down in the main character’s situation. It was just too overwhelming for me to handle. But the rest of the film has fresher material and nostalgic vibes. The amazing thing is they aren’t obvious, but you can read between the lines, like the “Pete & Pete” cameos I’ve mentioned above.
“I Saw the TV Glow” is something you’d want to hit the record button for. That is unless you can’t handle the direction here. But if you can, pause the tape when you need to answer the phone.
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