Film Review: I Like Movies is brilliant - all naiveté and poignant innocence

Isaiah Lehtinen in I Like Movies

• I Like Movies
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

Set in 2003, I Like Movies (15A) stars Isaiah Lehtinen as film-obsessed teen Lawrence, growing up frustrated in a small Canadian town.

Determined to attend film college at NYU, and naïve enough to believe that a part-time job at the local video store will pay his tuition, the abrasive, whiny Lawrence — his taste in movies can’t be faulted, but he’s an utter pest to friends and family alike — is horrified to discover that his new boss, Alana (Romina D’Ugo), hates movies.

With all the hallmarks of a bildungsroman — it’s the full-length debut from writer-director Chandler Levack — I Like Movies propels this apparently simplistic clash into a quietly gripping drama that is something of a poisoned love letter to cinema, and one that proceeds by way of hilarious narcissism, generational conflict, and surprisingly tender resolutions.

Lawrence may well be the most self-absorbed character to have appeared on our screens this year, Napoleon included, but his brash and blustering persona is frequently undermined by a blend of acute self-insight and a rather poignant innocence.

Romina D’Uro is terrific as the cynic who has very personal reasons for disabusing Lawrence of his illusions, while Isaiah Lehtinen brilliantly captures the monomania, fragile ego, and sense of entitlement of the precocious teen.