Day drinking becomes group therapy in writer-director Adam Rioux’s Urchins, the story of an adrift college student who finds a new lease on life when she cuts loose with some freewheeling strangers. New surroundings provide new outlooks, intoxicating substances slow down racing thoughts, and the aches of grief are gently massaged by the warmth of new friendship. Behold: the transformational power of spring break.
Ari (Breanna Yde) is vacationing in Florida, but the sandy beaches have become an existential quagmire: her friends are anything but, and she’s struggling in school, her GPA wilting and her scholarship along with it. She’s resigned to long sighs and looks into the middle distance until she’s rescued by Izzy (Sam Drust), Elijah (Ted Sutherland), and Jack (Trae Romano), three Florida natives whom she joins down the coast in a bid to escape her current predicament and maybe find herself along the way.
Urchins is a hangout movie that morphs into a coming-of-age narrative, and movies of this kind, particularly those featuring college-aged teens, are plentiful. Rioux, therefore, has his work cut out creating a cast of characters worth spending time with and then letting them dispense life advice. He succeeds at the former but struggles with the latter.
Ari (Breanna Yde) shares a relaxed moment in the water during Urchins.
“…an adrift college student who finds a new lease on life when she cuts loose with some freewheeling strangers…”
First, the good: The cinematography by Thomas L.H. Ford is easy on the eyes, and Rioux captures the feeling of falling hard and fast for any sort of life that isn’t on your own. He summons the spirit of carefree youth together with his core cast, whose chemistry is the movie’s greatest strength. The underlying knots of Ari’s malaise are slowly undone by the ostensibly unburdened outlook of her peers, and the life-altering perspective a little distance can give you is made real.
So far, so good! Then, Urchins goes deeper into Florida’s lush vegetation, and the coming-of-age narrative story that was hiding in the tall grass makes its ungainly appearance.
There just isn’t enough meat on the bone. Urchins clocks in at 70 minutes, and perhaps with more time spent fleshing out its characters, the gravity of the movie would pull a bit harder. As it stands, the weight of Urchins hinges on your tolerance for 19-year-olds musing wistfully about life. When these teens aren’t provided a background and outlook to speak from, they’re just talking, and listening becomes less imperative.
Like any vacation that offers a break from mundanity’s tedium, Urchins is an inviting and beguiling acquaintance, beautiful like a Florida sunset, but perhaps less impactful for the very same reason, as you know both Florida sunsets and coming-of-age stories are not in short supply.
"…beautiful like a Florida sunset..."
