When a 16-year-old struggling with obsessive-compulsive disorder reconnects with her childhood crush, she faces the potential of finding love and happiness despite her mental condition.
Turtles All The Way Down is directed by Hannah Marks director of After Everything (2018), Mark, Mary & Some Other People (2021) and Don't Make Me Go (2022).
When I saw that a new John Green film adaptation was being released I was very skeptical, even though I really liked The Fault In Our Stars (2014) and thought Paper Towns (2015) was fine enough. The era of John Green's peak popularity is well passed now combined with the fact that this was releasing on MAX (previously known as HBO Max) really came off as some sort of cash grab….as I have said in the past I like to be proven wrong and I definitely was here.
Hannah Marks is a director who has really shown through her work that she can make the characters and audiences connect incredibly easily. With a story like Turtles All The Way Down that is incredibly necessary and she really does an excellent job of doing so. The performances are very grounded here especially the performance from Isabela Merced who truly gives such a touching performance combine that with some actually effective filmmaking that's able to communicate what Merced's character Aza is feeling and going through and you have yourself something pretty meaningful.
We follow Aza throughout the film and see what she is going through with her OCD, there's some quite effective moments that easily connect the viewer with Aza something a lot of other films in the young adult adaption genre tend to struggle with. Isabela Merced is able to bring this grounded performance center stage and make each and every scene that much more believable, Cree who plays Daisy is also quite great here as well. She isn't exactly the most developed character but her bond with Aza is completely buyable and well grounded.
Outside of a very underdeveloped subplot about a missing billionaire that really feels a bit tacked on, the film does a pretty solid job with its storytelling. It moves at a nice pace that keeps the story moving along and never feels rushed, the movie definitely could have went a bit deeper with Aza and her OCD but what's presented is very sweet and absolutely works in the context of the story.
Turtles All The Way Down is available on MAX
8/10 B+
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