‘Mile End Kicks’ movie review: an authentic music dramedy, dampened by agonising character choices
Mile End Kicks is a highly personal and entertaining coming-of-age dramedy set in Montreal, but it misses out on greatness because of its adherence to clichés.
Mile End Kicks doesn’t even try to avoid the comparisons that will be made with Almost Famous, as a poster for Cameron Crowe’s seminal coming-of-age dramedy is seen within the background of a character’s room early on – it’s not just a winking nod to a contemporary classic, but an acknowledgement of the inescapable comparisons; both films are about young, aspiring journalists from conservative families who find themselves swept up in covering a specific moment in music history.
It is evident that writer/director Chandler Levack is pulling from her own experience, and Mile End Kicks does feel like a sincere love letter to the indie rock movement that swept Canada in the early 2010s. However, the film might not be removed enough from the era it depicts to have any real insight.
Barbie Ferreira is curiously absent in the third season of HBO’s Euphoria after being a star of its first two seasons, but she has the lead role in Mile End Kicks of Grace Pine, a music writer who is stuck in a thankless job at an online publication for the abrasive editor Jeff (Jay Baruchel). Grace’s ambition is to travel to Montreal, which she is convinced is the epicentre of the burgeoning indie movement, and land a deal to write a book about Alanis Morissette’s album Jagged Little Pill.
However, it’s amid her stay with her new roommate, Madeline (Juliette Gariépy), that Grace grows fascinated by the band Bone Patrol and its members Archie (Devon Bostick) and Chevy (Stanley Simons) – after becoming romantically involved with them both, Grace struggles to find a way to become involved in this scene while balancing her ambitions as a writer, journalist, and artist in her own right.
The realism with which Levack captures the energy surrounding small concert venues in Montreal is only matched by the nuances she finds in her study of entertainment journalism. There’s not a single writer or critic who hasn’t felt undercut by an editor, had to fight for their agreed-upon compensation, or seen large swathes of their work disappear overnight.
The specificity within Grace’s arc as a connoisseur of the arts makes for a glaring comparison with the familiarity of the coming-of-age story; from the moment that Grace creates a checklist of things she wants to do during her stay (such as “fall in love”), it’s evident that Mile End Kicks doesn’t have much self-awareness.
It’s not a film that presents a rosy portrayal of any of its characters; Chevy is a combustible figure who is both emotionally unavailable and leads into a relationship with Grace that he hasn’t thought out. Simons is strong because the film has left it up to the viewer how the audience should feel about Chevy, which can’t be said for some of the other characters.
Jeff is as hapless and lacking in empathy as any stereotypical editor in a journalism film, and Baruchel’s casting as an awkward, slightly creepy older guy feels derivative of previous performances. Even if Archie is predictably set up to be the more thoughtful, compassionate, and ultimately better choice for Grace in a way that could have felt laughably anticipated, Bostick is such a charming performer that the predictable story arc doesn’t feel grating. Even if many of the key emotional moments in Mile End Kicks feel scripted to a fault, there’s an honesty to Bostick that makes him the film’s standout.
It’s to the credit of Levack that she does not portray Grace as being beyond criticism, as she makes many of the same mistakes that any young person in her situation may have been guilty of. It’s not unusual for an ambitious young person to lose sight of their upbringing, overcommit to exciting opportunities, or forget to be there for the people that they care about.
However, Mile End Kicks offers so many warning signs about Grace’s downward spiral that it is hard to have any sympathy for a character who hasn’t thought through her endeavours at all. She shows up in Montreal without knowing a word of French, has no plans to compensate her roommate (who she liberally takes food from), and does no concrete work on the book that she committed to. Ferreira isn’t so charismatic that Grace can be forgiven for her fundamental misreading of the situation, as the film doesn’t make the case that her insights are all that valuable.
Although nostalgia has picked up at a faster rate than ever, Mile End Kicks may have been too quick to reflect on this era with real insight. Even if the reverence of the 1980s has become overblown in recent years, there’s been a passage of time that makes any retrospectives on the decade informed about the significant social and cultural changes that have emerged. Mile End Kicks offers inside jokes for those who had a specific worldview while involved within a niche interest, but for those watching from a distance, it’s not anything beyond a standard tale of arrested development.
