Weekend Viewing! Turtles All The Way Down: Coping With Teen Love and ODC
By Caroline Cao | July 11, 2024 | Celebrity & Culture
Looking for a film to watch this weekend? Movie Diva Caroline Cao reviews Turtles All the Way Down.
There have been underrated offerings about neurodivergence, though they have unfortunately been relegated to streamer releases. One I want to cite is Música (on Prime Video), Rudy Mancuso‘s ode to synesthesia. Now Turtles All the Way Down, a young adult drama based on the John Green book, is in play.
Asa Holmes (Isabela Merced) is a high schooler who lives with ODC (based on Green’s own experiences with OCD), as she tries not to obsess over bacteria in her body. When a billionaire neighbor goes missing, Asa’s nerdy friend Daisy Ramirez (the fun Cree Cicchino in a potential breakout role) gets this harebrained scheme to take up a search.
This reunites Asa with her camp childhood crush, Davis Pickett (a Felix Mallard with a dreamy gaze), the abandoned son of said neighbor. But when Asa realizes that Davis could be the one, she wonders whether her ODC might allow her to enjoy the intimacies of romance.
Green wrote the character of Asa because he wanted to discuss OCD as a difficult lived experience, not something that can enhance Sherlockian intellect. I studied Green’s book in grad school, so I anticipated how this adaptation would be handled.
Director Hannah Marks has been observed as a breakthrough director here. While the screenplay struggles to make some of the book’s iffier parts believable, Marks still carves out this delicate grace in etching teenage drama.
Asa’s therapy conversations feel too blisteringly real, just as Asa and Daisy’s dynamic is believably bonded, all while they’re trying to figure out how to live with each other. By the end of the movie, it’s easy to get soaked in its life-affirming qualities.
Turtles All The Way Down is streaming on MAX.
Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
