An Okay Review

If you saw the newest adaptation of Stephen King's It, one big takeaway may have been "those kids are all really good, and I bet they're going to go on to do more things." What you might not have expected was for some of them to go on to do things together. That's exactly what has happened with the Netflix series I Am Not Okay With This.

Based on a comic book series of the same name, this series stars Sophia Lillis as frustrated teenager Syd, struggling with the challenges of high school, a single mother she doesn't get along with, a younger brother she's helping to raise, and a father whose death just one year earlier has left her shaken. Oh, and also that she may be developing telekinetic superpowers. Her only ally when it comes to that last part is "weird kid" Stan (played by Wyatt Oleff)... if she can bring herself to open up to him.

I Am Not Okay With This is an odd blend of genres you won't find anywhere else. It feels like some sort of 80s John Hughes movie throwback, where high school kids you wouldn't expect to meet in real life are nevertheless thrown together. You get stoic malaise from the protagonist, a nerdy-but-still-cool supporting character. A relationship between that character and the weirdo that defies a simple label. Put Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club in a blender (with maybe a shot of Ferris Bueller's Day Off), and the resulting smoothie might look a lot like this show.

Except of course that it's also a superhero origin story. And this element actually mixes with the whole better than you might expect. The show is actually slower to dole out this aspect than you might expect, given how little show there is. It's just 7 episodes, each one around 25 minutes long. This does help the whole season go down fast and easy, but it also means the whole thing is almost just a prologue to some other story you'd really like to see. It's entertaining along the way, and yet it also sort of feels like it's just gotten where it's going right when it's all over. (Will there be a season 2? No word yet.)

The show has two big selling points in its favor, as I see it. One is its effective blend of lightness and poignancy. Any given episode has a few moments to make you laugh out loud, and a few moments to tug at your heartstrings. And it negotiates the two without the whiplash you might expect in a compact 20-25 minutes. Two is the performances from those two young actors from It. Sophia Lillis is a great anchor for the whole thing, and her steadiness gives Wyatt Oleff space to play around and have goofy fun.

To be perfectly honest, this show probably isn't better than whatever thing someone has assured you is The Best Thing You're Not Watching. But it's so compact that it's easy to make time for, and it's also scratching an itch that I think isn't quite reached by anything else. I'd call it a B overall. For some, that's maybe not enough to cut through the immense pile of excellent things to watch. For others, considering the quirkiness and the low time commitment here, it just might be ticket.