Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Upstart indie studio A24 has become so associated with the coming-of-age movie that they’re programming an entire month of their movies in the genre at AMC Theaters is programming an entire series of them in August 2024. It’s too bad that Janet Planet (now streaming on VOD platforms like Prime Video) is fresh from theaters. It belongs at the very top of that canon.
JANET PLANET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: The events of Janet Planet unfold in 1991 Western Massachusetts, but its setting is the age of 11. That’s where the sweet, shy Lacey (newcomer Zoe Ziegler) resides as she explores an inner world of imagination that inspires her more than her bucolic surroundings. She’s faced with the ultimate predicament of precociousness: her understanding of the world outstrips her ability to affect any changes to it.
That’s particularly pronounced in the hampered, if not outright hostile, relationship she shares with her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson). The fickle, flighty acupuncturist frequently feels more like the child in the family. Throughout a quiet and relatively uneventful summer, Lacey observes quietly as Janet cycles through a series of three codependent relationships with a boyfriend (Will Patton’s Wayne), a good friend (Sophie Okonedo’s Regina), and a local theater troupe leader (Elias Koteas’ Avi). Yet through it all, Janet remains the one constant that Lacey can cling to — and she does so even tighter as she reckons with the changes around and inside herself.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Janet Planet operates squarely in the Lady Bird camp of mother-daughter movies. (Fun fact: Annie Baker and Greta Gerwig are sisters-in-law! Birds of a feather, some might say.)
Performance Worth Watching: Julianne Nicholson has been the best part of countless movies and TV shows for years. Her Emmy win for Mare of Easttown means we can’t call her underrated, but it still feels like we should be talking about her more as one of her generation’s premiere actresses. She has a deceptively simple role as the titular character but not the protagonist, though she exerts a gravitational pull that unwittingly drags around all in her orbit for an unconventional journey.
Memorable Dialogue: Early in the film, when Lacy wants her way, she pulls out the most classic 11-year-old card in the book: being overdramatic. “I’m gonna kill myself if you don’t come get me,” she exhorts Janet, setting the tone for the type of relationship they share.
Sex and Skin: With Lacy’s age and perspective being what it is, sexuality exists at the edges of her periphery and doesn’t manifest on screen in Janet Planet.
Our Take: While Janet Planet has much in common with the “coming-of-age” genre, Annie Baker’s story of tween travails is notable because it’s not so much concerned with “coming” as it is with “being.” The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Baker is remarkably comfortable dwelling in the silence and stillness of everyday life. There’s not a hint of “staginess” or “theatricality” as it’s traditionally defined.
This modest miracle of a movie captures all the pain and promise of emerging adolescence. Janet Planet lives in the tension between yearning to be one’s true self while inevitably remaining tied to a parent’s identity and choices. While millennials will get a kick out of nostalgic details like the Clarissa Explains It All theme song, Baker conjures childhood from sensory details of pre-internet boredom far more frequently than she does from obvious cultural signifiers. Baker treats Lacey’s life with all the adult seriousness it deserves but never forgets that childhood deserves to be seen and respected as its own distinct, delightful, and demanding life stage. That forthrightness is validating and vivid to behold.
Our Call: STREAM IT! Janet Planet doesn’t just tell a story so much as it invites you to enter it. It’s a magic portal back into your own childhood, both to reinhabit the mindset of those days and reflect upon them with some distance. Annie Baker finds a moving balance of head and heart in her directorial debut that portends a brilliant cinematic career to come.
Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.
