Title: Turtles All the Way Down
MPA Rating: PG-13
Director: Hannah Marks
Starring: Isabela Merced, Cree, Judy Reyes
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins

What It Is: Aza Holmes (Merced) is a teenage girl struggling (mightily) with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Not in a normal way either. The amount of anxiety this causes her is severe. Aza is scared to depth of getting a bacteria colitis known as C. Diff. Now, at 16 years old Aza has feelings for Davis, who’s dad has just gone missing. This will draw the two closer and lead to some hugely important life-changes for the cautious teenager.

What We Think: Let’s start off by saying I love Hannah Marks as a director. Look at our reviews of Mark, Mary and Some Other People and Don’t Make Me Go both of which are very good flicks and do what they do very well. Marks gets sorta handicapped by John Green’s John Greenest dialogue. Something I found wholly unlikable and pretentious about the words coming out of the characters mouths. It’s just all very…stilted. Nothing here feels like a real conversation between teenagers. Instead is all comes off and some pseudo-poetic bullshit. Marks is a talented director and when there aren’t dumb narrative moments and Marks focuses on just working her camera and making it all look great. This is where she thrives.

Our Grade: C, Speaking of teenagers I believe this is something they’d call MID. It suffers from annoying dialogue syndrome. Something prevelant in any words John Green writes. Merced and Cree and fine even if the escalation of their argument doesn’t feel natural. As a romance it doesn’t work well enough. As a mystery it’s weak. It’s really a film that tries it’s very best and who’s director is clearly working against a shit script. Overall it’s a very okay movie you can check out on Hulu. Do it or don’t it lacks the emotional tug of Greens previous big film The Fault in Our Stars.