Turtles All the Way Down

I feel like we're living in a golden age of genre re-definition. So many categories of movies are realizing what slashers were forced to realize in the 90's: it doesn't pay to Taco Bell their genre, presenting the familiar tropes with new faces over and over again. Movies like Somebody I Used To Know (rom-coms) and Honor Society (teen rom-coms) have up-ended traditions for the better, telling stories where everything doesn't have to lead to the Hollywood ending, while exploring some deep themes with honesty. And I'm not saying they're the first to do it, just the ones that stick out in my mind. Turtles All The Way Down follows in those footsteps and then some, doing for the teen coming of age story what those did for their respective genres. It is the story of Aza, a 16 year old with OCD and anxiety that manifests as a pathological fear of the human. She loses her father at a young age; she isn't processing her grief in a healthy manner, and she isn't taking her medication. She ends up getting sucked into the life of a boy she meet at a grieving children's camp, whose dad has disappeared. The movie follows her as she navigates battling her mental illness, her interest in the boy, her sisterly friendship with Daisy, and the distance between her and her mother. I've left out a fair bit in that summary because Turtles has a lot of stuff in it, and to write it out, it would seem like an over-stuffed movie for what it is. What's beautiful about the movie is that it isn't a lot, not even close. Even though there's multiple strands going on in Turtles, they all tie together through Aza. Thinking about college, the first relationship, parental discord, the complications of friendships, and processing trauma all are interwoven and with no small amount of elegance. Life is never a single-track course, and Turtles reflects that, treating the many facets of Aza's life and how her struggles with mental illness affects them all as parts of a larger puzzle. All the key relationships are given time to be explored and defined, both for their own sake and how Aza's mental health issues impact them, and how that impacts her, and it all feels honest. Even more amazing is how much of this movie is straight-up comedy and aww-cute, but it never treats Aza or her struggles as the butt of the joke. And when it needs to shift gears, it never feels jarring. Aza's mental health issues are the crux of this movie, and they are handled with delicacy but also honesty. She's never presented as an irrational, hormonal teenager, and Turtles never looks down on Aza for having issues, but it doesn't shy away from her negligence in addressing them either. She has medication, but she doesn't take it regularly enough for it to help. She attends therapy, but holds back on certain topics and resists some advice. She was closer with her dad, so her mom handles Aza the best way she can, but it isn't quite the same. Her best friend, Daisy, loves Aza and they're as close as close can be, but Daisy is also exhausted from dealing with Aza's issues and a little resentful that the relationship seems to be more a lead and a sidekick than two equals. Aza falls into thought spirals, where all she can think of all the millions of microbes and bacteria and organisms living on the human body and how they'll all lead to some crippling illness, and she'll start to doubt that she's performed the rituals that ground her. And as the complications in her life rise, the rituals start to lose their potency. Turtles is not afraid to look at mental illness and present in it all its terrible, terrifying glory, and not once does it suggest a quick fix is possible. In a way, Turtles reminds me a lot of Prozac Nation, a profoundly underrated movie with Christina Ricci about a young woman going into college and dealing with bipolar disorder. Prozac didn't have a whiff of the comedy Turtles has for much of its runtime, but it too treated mental illness as a very real and very complex issue. Prozac was more about charting someone hitting rock bottom because they didn't seek treatment where Turtles isn't as dire, but both are honest about the subject matter and it how it affects both the person with the illness and everyone in their orbit. This would not be possible without a strong cast, and Turtles nails that part. The supporting cast are all great, but the two standouts are Cree (playing Daisy, the best friend) and Isabella Merced. Daisy is a cool kinda punk chick, sassy and energetic, artsy but geeky (she stands on a log in a forest holding a stick making lightsaber sounds), and just so much damned fun. She's also given a lot of depth through hints about her life, like always needing to use coupons at Applebee's and never ordering soda because that's a splurge, or always being the impetus behind her and Aza to do something different. That last bit is important, because she both genuinely wants to have Aza's back 100% of the time, but it also shows the imbalance in the relationship, something that secretly gnaws at her. And then there's Merced. I remember seeing her on a Nickelodeon tween sitcom and thinking she'd be a star someday. She just had a certain charm and charisma to her. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here; I'm more elated I was right, because so many young talent in the kid's TV machine disappear, and I didn't want her to be one of them. She is simply amazing here. When Aza looks up "cute things to text to a boy" and she's laying on her bed getting all swoony over what he's texting, my heart melted. When she would trade quips with Daisy, my smile cut my head in half. And when she would get trapped in a thought spiral or started to self-harm, I wanted to take her in my arms and just hold her forever. Merced communicates Aza's whirling blender of emotions and struggles else with frightening authenticity. Aza feels like a real teenager. I should know, I got two of them and a third approaching. Merced has done other, lighter stuff -- she played Dora The Explorer in the live action movie and was in one of the Transformers sequels -- but this is the first thing I've seen her in where the potential I saw is realized. I hope this is her breakthrough. She deserves it. And, as I hinted at before, this isn't a Hollywood ending movie. She isn't magically cured, not all relationships survive, and Aza has much more growing and work on herself to do. Just as in real life, there are no chapter breaks, no clean endings. The story goes on, and Turtles is honest about that. I could go on and on about this movie and all the ways it impressed and moved me. I think you get the picture by now. I will always be a sucker for coming of age stories, even when they follow the familiar beats. But it's so damned awesome to see one not do the same old thing and succeed. I hope the genre keeps seeing this kind of growth, and one day, I hope this movie and its wonderful cast gets the recognition it deserves for helping change the genre.