I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS REVIEW: Being a teenage girl can blow your mind sometimes…

I Am Not Okay With This begins with Sydney Novak, covered in blood, running down the middle of the street at night.

There are probably other ways she’d rather be spending her time. That would seem to make sense with the series’s narrative: her life is pretty normal — up until the part where you find out she has superpowers that allow her to blow things up with her mind.

The latest representative of this angst-ridden, hormone-soaked time has come to Netflix, the streaming giants new comedy is a work of genius that recalls a lot of other stories about young women coming of age. From Carrie’s supernatural angst, too Juno’s oddball quirk, along with a bit of Buffy Summers and Eleven from Stranger Things.

Sydney Novak (Sophia Lillis, last seen on the small screen as the young Camille Preaker in Sharp Objects and as Nancy Drew unraveling the mystery of a hidden staircase in a cinema near you last year) is the teenager in question. And her powers are a manifestation of her rage, and she has plenty to be angry about.

Sydney has a lot to grapple with. There’s her family’s sudden relocation to a stultifying small town. Desertion by her best friend, Dina (Sofia Bryant), for the world of boys and popularity now that “she got her braces taken off and her boobs suddenly arrived”. Her single mom is overworked and demanding. And a stubborn outbreak of zits on her thighs. She has also become the object of affection for the local nerd, Stanley Barber (Wyatt Oleff).

And, as the show slowly reveals, there’s a deep family trauma that has haunted her since before the series began, her father’s recent suicide (in the basement of their home). Small wonder, then, that the roiling mass of emotions inside her seeks an outlet.

Through it all, Sydney is forced to reckon with the alarming discovery that she is suddenly in possession of superpowers that allow her to move things without touching them … and often against her will. Unlike countless other superhero origin stories, Syd has no idea how to control her powers, which seem directly tied to her emotions.

As the series goes on, Sydney must learn to control her growing telekinetic powers, especially as larger plot dynamics and dangers grow, but the true pleasure of the thing lies in Lillis’s wonderful performance, which manages to convey the depths and numbness of loss beneath the layers of more ordinary teenage fury and frustration.

The show has its own charm, confidence, and style, which come in great part from its standout performance by Sophia Lillis. Sydney, especially in the voiceover excerpts from the diary she has been instructed to keep by her guidance counselor. Lillis juggles all of Sydney’s wildly conflicting emotions with ease, able to simultaneously portray the anxieties expressed in the running narration from Syd’s diary that’s read throughout the show and the quirky facade she presents to the world.

I Am Not Okay With This spends most of its time being more charming than angry.

With Dina preoccupied with Brad, the only person Syd feels like she can entrust with her secret is Stan, who immediately sets about trying to interpret her problem through the familiar language of comics.

This is where the show focuses on Syd’s budding relationship with fellow weirdo Stanley Barber. Stanley is played by Wyatt Oleff — best known as one of the kids in It, but a little bit wrong. This plays incredibly well opposite Sophia Lillis’ Syd, another IT star and a tremendously talented young actor.

The ending is crude and hilariously dark, and viewers will be sitting watching the show, wondering what did I just witness?

And while it’s never really explained why every part of I Am Not Okay with This–from the costumes to the music selection to the set design–feels pulled directly from the 80s, despite its characters’ uses of smartphones, USB drives, and Instagram, the overall aesthetic is still a lot of fun.

But at the end of the day, who really cares considering the show is terrifically portrayed and filled with great laughs by it’s two young leads.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

It is the second television adaptation helmed by Jonathan Entwistle of a Charles Forsman graphic novel – the first was The End of the F***ing World, and their collaboration has once more borne fine fruit. The show radiates warmth, love, character, has a killer soundtrack too.

5/5 STARS