“It’s so hard to get old without a cause,
I don’t want to perish like a fading horse,
Youth is like diamonds in the sun,
And diamonds are forever.”
– Forever Young, by Alphaville
The melancholy yearnings of Alphaville’s “Forever Young” fill our ears as we watch our still subject, a young male who looks to be around 15 years old, sitting silently in the back of a dark squad car. While the words may be firmly planted in actual events of the 1980s, these lyrics also perfectly reflect the feeling of lost youth today as much as any other period in time. In this extended framing of almost complete stillness (aside from the red and blue lights reflecting outside of the vehicle), we can almost see an entire story through our ears and through the face of a bloodied young man staring into the abyss. This is you. Or maybe it’s someone you once knew.
As it turns out, we’re seeing the aftermath of a story that we’ve yet to be told. The bloodied young man is a 16-year-old from a strict Mormon family in Syracuse, New York, named Simon (Maxwell Jenkins). While we don’t have a solid date, we’re told that this story is set in the late 1980s. Simon’s car ride provides a vehicle (literally) for him to tell us the story, as he dictates it to the police officer driving him, Officer Harris (Chris Sandiford).
“… a disillusioned teen runs away to Ottawa to chase a girl in this coming-of-age road trip comedy.”
As for how the story begins? After Simon’s father decides to tell him what he’s going to do for the rest of his life, rather than allowing him to make that decision for himself, the disillusioned teen decides to risk everything and convince his friends to run away with him to Ottawa, Canada, so he can chase a girl that he likes. They’re uninterested until Simon reveals to them that this will be the last time they ever get to do anything together, because of what his dad is doing to him.
Writer/Director Rob Grant brings us This Too Shall Pass, a film that, despite being created in 2024, is firmly planted in the 1980s, along with the spirit of teen films of that era. Through classic teen movie storytelling, Grant recalls the teenage struggles of 1980s films created by masters such as John Hughes and Cameron Crow, even going so far as to call them out by name. With many direct and indirect references to movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, and classic road trip comedies like One Crazy Summer and The Sure Thing, the director brings us his own unique vision of the classic teen angst comedy drama. In the process, we learn that regardless of what struggles your teen years bring, this too shall pass.
"…‘Forever Young’ plays while a bloody teen sits in the back of a squad car. "
