Hill takes director’s chair... and has his eyes on the detail

Mid90s

Traverse Theatre Director: Jonah Hill With: Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, Na-kel Smith Runtime: 84 mins WHEN you have been in the movie business as long as

Jonah Hill – it has been 15 years and counting since

I Heart Huckabees – it is something of a given that you will be given a turn in the director’s chair.

There you go, kid, your turn to play, just don’t break anything.

For a while, Mid90s, which opened the Glasgow Film Festival last night, looked like being the usual underwhelming result of such generosity: a series of partly baked scenes held together with a tracks of my years soundtrack.

But what do you know, Hill has picked up a lot more on film sets than the art of telling jokes.

His coming of age tale is set in LA in the 1990s, where 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny

Suljic) is not having the best of times.

Bullied by his older brother, and babied by his mother, he has no friends of his own. When he sees a group of skateboarders fooling around and having fun he hangs around in their shadow until the band of brothers notices him.

Hill’s screenplay tries to go deeper than the usual debut director’s offerings, at times convincingly (both sons are a messy bundle of hurt and resentment), at other points not (the poor mother, as ever, gets the blame, though it is never entirely clear why). The ending, too, cannot resist the temptation to tie everything up in a nice, neat bow.

But this is an impressive piece by Hill, well-paced, gorgeously shot, with an eye for detail and an ear for authentic speech.

Above all, he has chosen well in a young cast who give it their all, Suljic and Na-kel Smith in particular.

Welcome to the directors’ club, Mr Hill.