Film Review: Adult Life Skills Gets Comically Real
Burned out? Snowflakes? Whiny, trophy babies? Millennials have a slew of negative connotations attached to their generation. Yet, they are not new to the dark, “old-young” dynamic. Yet, things have changed. Everything in life, thanks to technology, feels both exposed and urgent while also feeling mundane and stale. With this notion in mind, director and writer Rachel Tunnard’s Adult Life Skills, makes you laugh and wonder if it always sucked to be “young-ish.”
Nowadays, it feels like finding stability and a proper career path is near impossible, especially one that makes you happy. Jodie Whittaker plays Anna; an eccentric, thirty year old woman that is smart, kind, creative, and completely lost. She does not know where to go with her life, especially after the death of her twin brother: Billy. Her grief over her loss couples with her sheer confusion over what to do with her life, and glues her to a routine that involved filming Youtube videos with her thumbs as actors. Despite being young and promising, she is stale and stuck, of which Jodie Whittaker’s performance brings compassion to those that “don’t know.”
Life does not stop being hard on you because you have lost or feel lost. There are times when you wish you can tell the world to pause so you can grieve and process all these feelings that have, strangely, made you numb. Whittaker makes Anna a warm representation of this dilemma. She is, literally, hiding from the world in her mother’s shed, and builds a nook, for herself, that is frozen in time, space, and any analysis of ambition/ reality. Hence, her mother, (Lorraine Ashbourne as Marion), comes in like a reality check to tell Anna it is time to MOVE OUT!
Ashbourne as Marion and Eileen Davies as Anna’s cheeky grandmother, Jean, is a mixture of humor, devastation, and tough love. In essence, they are moms, but ones that know the literal loss of a child. Hence, their urgency to release Anna from her emotional prison/ backyard shed. Like most moms, they are aware when their child is “off;” proving you never stop being a “kid” to your parent. The problem is when do you stop being a kid to yourself? Tunnard turns Anna into a symbol of how tragedies, like a brother’s death, amplify one’s insecurities. It is not as if Anna was always clear and “ready to go” in life, but her trauma stopped her from looking for a sense of realism and clarity. Hence, her heart softens when her neighbor’s mother falls terminally ill.
Through Clint (Ozzy Myers) Anna learns to heal, and Myers, for being a kid, gives heartfelt, mature performance. No matter what age, the meaning of life, especially when facing death, leaves you seeking solace. A potential romance with quirky Brendan (Brett Goldstein), a pair of strong, maternal figures that REFUSE to let her give up on herself, and the sweetness of a child, Anna begins to see that you can stop your life but you cannot stop Life, itself. The world will continue until you learn to join it again, and it takes seeing your worth to do so. Yes, I know I got really sappy in this review, but Tunnard has made a film that is briskly enlightening. Its clever wit, countryside shots, and simple approach to life-altering pain, makes is refreshingly watchable. Moreover, it feels like a quick look into why it may take a person so long to figure out how to move forward; you don’t realize how quickly time flies, when you feel buried. Adult Life Skills Comes Out In Theaters January 18.
