How to Make a Good Coming of Age Movie

Every time I want to watch a movie, I think of a couple of movie genres to boil my decision down to one film. I always find myself coming back to the same genre, coming of age movies. If you don’t know what that means, Wikipedia describes it as; a coming-of-age story is a genre of literature, film, and video that focuses on the growth of a protagonist from youth to adulthood. The problem with this genre is, so many movies do it wrong. Today, we are going to walk through the aspects that make a good and realistic coming of age film, along with my favourite, and least favourite examples.

No Real Antagonist

In a real and authentic coming of age film, there is no real protagonist. Lady Bird, for example, follows the story of Christine learning more about herself in Sacramento, California in 2002. In the story, she faces conflict within herself, as she tries to figure out her life and what she wants to do with it. There is no “popular mean girl”, because those cliched characters don’t exist in real life. Lady Bird is a relatable movie because it focuses on the fact that you are your own challenge. The only person stopping you from doing what you want to do, is you.

Default Personalities

In every bad coming of age film, every character has personality traits that feel like they were ripped out of a character textbook. In real life, people can have mixed personality traits. For example, if you’re smart, you can also be popular or pretty. You can also not know what your personality is yet. For example, The Edge of Seventeen is a beautiful take on this type of situation. Nadine is a 17 year old girl who still doesn’t know anything about herself or her life, all she has is her best friend, Krista. Once her and Krista split up their friendship, it’s up to Nadine to figure out who she is by herself. It shows that in the real world, we don’t always have to be sure about everything. A movie that doesn’t follow this rule is, Tall Girl. Every character is so cliche, and makes everything feel so fake. The protagonist is unpopular, but smart. The antagonist is popular, pretty and dumb, and the love interest is absolutely clueless.

Simple Plot-lines

The golden rule for making a solid coming of age film, is to make it realistic. The best way of doing that is to have a simple, yet beautiful plotline. Lady Bird, The Edge of Seventeen, Eighth Grade, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Boyhood are all, in general, about the protagonist growing up. Over complicated storylines lead to a fall of interest from the audience, and a loss of relatability. For example, Sierra Burges is a Loser, is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It’s about a girl who befriends the popular girl and catfishes this guy, and gets caught in the end, just to fix everything with a song. With no real consequences. It’s a bad storyline that leaves a bad message to impressionable audiences.

To conclude, less is more when it comes to good coming of age films.