‘Big Time Adolescence’ is Pete Davidson’s breakout — movie review

Big Time Adolescence follows the friendship between a stoner burnout and a high school student whose debaucherous

Big Time Adolescence is the perfect vehicle for a comedy star like Pete Davidson to make the jump to film. It premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival to much buzz following his highly-publicized breakup with Ariana Grande. The film and his performance came as a surprise — Davidson could act. Now, more than a year later and a clearer space to evaluate it, that still stands. And it isn’t just the surprise that a Saturday Night Live player could handle something more than just a comedy sketch, Davidson delivers a lot of nuance within a character that we’ve come so much to associate with him. 

Davidson plays Zeke, who is an effortlessly cool and debaucherous high school student when we’re introduced to him. His then-girlfriend Kate (Emily Arlook) and her little brother Mo (Griffin Gluck) — short for Monroe — are infatuated with his no-care attitude. Six years later, Kate is long gone applying for law schools while Mo, now a high schooler, and Zeke still hang out nearly every night. 

It’s easy to see what a teen growing up in a decaying suburb would see in Zeke. He has a house (albeit a dirty frat house-like shack), a girlfriend (Sydney Sweeney), and spends his days playing video games, drinking, smoking, and still not having a care in the world. To Mo, he’s a hero. Director and screenwriter Jason Orley builds their relationship with jaunty conversations and interactions that show just how much care the pair have for each other. Davidson and Gluck find chemistry that feels organic, exactly how you’d expect a pair with their story to act.

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There’s a sweetness to Big Time Adolescence that’s surprising. Admittedly, when I came into the movie I was expecting raunchy sex jokes and gay panic humor. Instead, it’s a surprisingly measured character study. Mo’s fascination with Zeke, that is a borderline obsession (they’re with each other every free minute they have), weighs heavily on Mo’s father Reuben (Jon Cryer), who is wary of the influence Zeke has on Mo. However, the movie is careful not to stray into cliches with the relationship even when the plot does. Zeke doesn’t mean harm to Mo and Mo isn’t played as a nerdy kid trying to be cool for laughs. 

When Mo is invited to a senior party, one Zeke was credited with inventing (his supposed claim to fame), Zeke suggests he uses the opportunity to sell pot to the more than willing students. Though hesitant at first, Mo quickly warms to the idea when he realizes it buys him clout with the popular kids and gets him invited to parties where he can talk to his crush Sophie (Oona Laurence). 

But again, though it’s a storyline we’ve seen over and over before, Orley keeps the movie focused on his characters. In particular, Mo learning to be a teen and Zeke learning to be an adult. There’s so much nuance in their journies, especially with Davidson, whose performance finds an emotional complexity that has until now been wasted on meaningless projects. The stoner burnout manchild could easily become a caricature, but Davidson gives him texture — he feels lived in. Orley finds the insecurities and shows them to us in subtle ways. Gluck does equally good work by portraying Mo as a kid awkwardly finding his footing. 

The final scene is where Big Time Adolescence feels important — frankly, it reminded me of the final Ramona monologue in Hustlers. The journey for the two boys is set and in their final conversation together they navigate what that means for their relationship. It’s so emotional for a movie I thought would be inundated with offensive humor just because of its star. Yet another reason to never discount someone based on their history. Big Time Adolescence isn’t perfect, largely because it is weighed down by its less-than-original plot. Still, the thematic depths it finds is great and the characters it creates even better.