The
Saturday Night Live star is a perma-slacker in this shaggy, warmly received Sundance coming-of-age tale which has finally shown up on Hulu
After it premiered to mostly strong notices at Sundance in 2019, Big Time Adolescence seemed like an easy sell in theory, one of the easiest of that year’s crop of premieres: commercial, crowd-pleasing and the first major film role for a headline-grabbing comic. But it remained on the shelf for longer than expected, a full nine months before Neon and Hulu partnered for a relatively meagre $4m pickup. The lethargy was perhaps a sign of how difficult it has become to sell a big screen
comedy fronted by a teen with streamers like
Netflix instead becoming the go-to for a film such as this, appealing to a younger audience who have grown to reserve the multiplex for more pronounced events.
Related: Lost Girls review – well-intentioned but plodding Netflix true crime drama