Antarctica Review: Teenage Pregnancy and a Time Traveler Shape a More Eccentric Booksmart

Any good coming-of-age movie needs strong, quirky, and likeable characters to get through the pains of adolescence. If it’s set in a super-critical little town that looks more like a prison, all the better. If these characters come together for their dreams of experiencing something bigger and brighter, even better. And if they start to hallucinate future travelers too, well, buckle up for a wild ride. In this way the new movie Antarctic, which follows two best friends in their senior year of high school, looks less like the steamy female-directed comedy Smart booking and more like the deranged Napoleon Dynamite in the way he uses the strangeness of a small town to emphasize the strangeness of growing up.

[Ed. note: This review contains slight spoilers for Antarctica.]

In Antarctic, Surly Janet (Kimmie Muroya) is given mood-altering drugs (marketed as a gentle way to be more respectful of society as a woman), which makes her hallucinate. She meets a boy who pretends to be from the future and the two start a romance. Meanwhile, after an unhappy relationship at the party, the shy Kat (Chloë Levine) becomes the butt of rumors that escalate when she finds out she is pregnant. The two navigate their strained new friendship as they grapple with estranged issues and their dreams of escaping their stifling little town.

The movie works best when director Keith Bearden brings out the weirdness and brings the characters together, but it would be stronger if the Kat and Janet stories shared a stronger thread. Antarctic’The parts feel disconnected, where a stronger bond could have assembled them into something greater than the sum of their parts. But as it is, while these parts are stable on their own and sometimes wonderfully moving, they still feel like separate vignettes.

Janet’s misadventures blur the line between reality and the side effects of her medication. This is perhaps the most interesting story, because it is so surreal and unfamiliar, which means that the plot rhythms are surprising and unexpected. Kat’s story is more familiar and grounded in reality, but when juxtaposed with Janet’s, it limps without much resonance. They each share a theme of what it is like to grow up as a young woman in a small town with a closed mind that doesn’t take young people seriously, but there is a slight dissonance between the fuzzy reality of the world. story of Janet and the awkward reality of Kat. it’s shocking enough to interfere with the overall tone of the film.

The best scenes in the movie happen when the girls are together. Sometimes it’s a typical teenage movie scene, where they go up to a rooftop to share their thoughts and spy on their neighbors. But AntarcticIn the most powerful sequences, Bearden uses soft vignettes to capture big emotions. When Kat tells Janet she’s pregnant, she does so through a voiceover as faceless hands pass photos of the girls, in picture frames and on phone screens. Then the two look at the stars that glow in the dark on the ceiling above them.

Putting the whole movie together, however, is underrated dark humor. While Kat and Janet have some comedic moments, what makes the movie funny is the sneaky delivery of absurd information and details. At a school assembly, the principal doesn’t even blink when commenting on the gang-type murders that are taking place at a nearby elementary school. A recurring gag is the idolatry of Ronald Reagan by the history teacher. None of these are necessarily out of the realm of possibility, but even taken to extremes they underscore the city’s messy nature, making Janet’s time-traveling boyfriend seem plausible.

When Janet finds out exactly what’s going on with her time-traveling friend, it’s a revelation that fits perfectly into the film’s slightly absurd tone – not speculative fiction, but a stranger version of reality. In the moments when Kat’s plot leans toward this absurdity, the two stories are so close to each other. The best times, however, come when the two girls take comfort in the midst of the chaos. Their small town can be deeply strange and their own life can get crazier, but they are each other. Both Napoleon and Deb reconcile by playing tetherball at the end of Napoleon Dynamite

, Kat and Janet reconcile in a quiet and quiet moment. What is a coming of age movie, if not just the friends we made along the way?

Antarctic now available for digital rental in the Microsoft Store and via on-demand services.