Were You a Kid in the 80s? Kid 90 Might Be Your Deal.
Kid 90
?Directed by Soleil Moon Frye?
The review:
A slight documentary, and your interest will vary depending on your exposure to the kid actors who populated your 80s and 90s television and movie screens* and how interested you are in learning about that transition from being a kid actor to an adult. Because Soleil Moon Frye has hours of VHS video and cassette tapes, plus her copious journals, we get at-home glimpses of a bunch of child stars that you may or may not have had crushes on.** There are a lot of scenes that depict drug use,*** and Frye’s eye is constantly turning toward another yet another boy**** while letting us in on some negative experiences.*****
The verdict: Good
(If you were a teenager in the 80s and 90s.)
Cost: Disney+ Hulu bundle monthly charge ($12.99)
Where watched: at home
Consider also watching:
- Kids
- Dazed and Confused
- A bunch of 80s television shows
Further sentences:
*I watched Soleil Moon Frye in Punky Brewster on prime time network television, so that’s exactly me.
**And then you get to see some of them as they look now. Back in 1990, my heart tripped over Balthazar Getty in Young Guns II. Now, he looks like a youthful middle-aged man.
***So much so that it felt cliched.
****If I had captured my teenage years with a video camera, the result would have been the same.
*****There’s a sexual assault recorded in her journals that wasn’t in the forefront of her memory. Her first sexual experience she seems happy with, though the age difference had me squirming.
Questions:
Was this navel gazing or interesting insight into a unique experience?
What would your video camera have captured in your teenage years?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Soleil Moon Frye spent four years going through footage she had shot, diaries, and voicemails from when she was a teenager in the 1990s.
Other reviews of Kid 90:
- Lauren J. Coates, Consequence of Sound
- Adesola Thomas, Paste
