“Forever…,” the 1975 Judy Blume YA novel about teenagers losing their virginity, has inspired a Netflix series with changes you’re free to regard as substantial or superficial. Premiering Thursday, it’s a very sweet show, full of characters whose differing needs and ideas sometimes put them at odds, but who are for the most part very nice. The worst you can say about any of them is that they are clueless or confused in the way that people, especially young people, with their incompletely formed brains — a scientific fact someone raises helpfully — often are.
I’ve never read any of Blume’s books, though I have read reviews and synopses of “Forever…,” and visited Reddit groups where contributors recall secretly passing the novel around in high, middle or even elementary school — Blume (already a kid-lit superstar for “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”) plus sex being an irresistible combination: adolescent hot stuff, mid-’70s style. I can report at least that in both the novel and the series, a character has named his penis Ralph.
The TV show, created by Mara Brock Akil (“Girlfriends”), cuts the ellipses from the book’s title. The characters are Black, a change that is both superficial and substantial. It honors the shape and intent of the novel while adding issues not on Blume’s agenda regarding Black culture and advancement. More significantly, the series has been set in the near-present day — 2018 — and moved from quiet suburban New Jersey to sophisticated, sprawling Los Angeles. The first episode is directed by Regina King (“One Night in Miami”).
Things have changed in the half-century since “Forever…” was published, even subtracting the years the series backtracks. Not that teenagers weren’t falling in love and having sex — or not falling in love but having sex — in the year that Captain & Tennille released “Love Will Keep Us Together.” But the texting and blocking, the free-for-all backwaters of the internet and the carnal shenanigans that color contemporary TV teendom do put a different complexion on growing up. Of course, young people can be having a lot of sex while not, in the strict formulation, “having sex,” if you get my meaning. Yet a show about a couple of high school kids who, whatever else, have never Gone All the Way, and take the prospect seriously, can feel like a throwback to more innocent times — and that is not a bad feeling at all.
Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.) and Keisha (Lovie Simone) are our young lovers, who meet, or meet again — they had known each other in elementary school — at a New Year’s Eve party, thrown by Keisha’s rich but not snooty friend Chloe (Ali Gallo), the series’ only regular white character. (There is fondue, the whitest of all foods.) Justin and Keisha come from different sides of the tracks , or “the 10,” in L.A. psychogeography; his family has a big modern mansion in the hills, while she lives with her mother, Shelly (Xosha Roquemore), in an apartment down around Slauson and Crenshaw.
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Playing Justin’s (Michael Cooper Jr.) parents are Wood Harris and Karen Pittman.
(Elizabeth Morris / Netflix)
Keisha is an A student (and track star) whose friends call her Urkel; her mother struggles to pay for the Catholic school to which she’s recently transferred. A full-ride scholarship to Howard University is in her sights, and there’s no reason to think that she won’t get it, even with a sex tape that’s gone around.
Justin, who has “a learning difference” and problems with “executive function,” struggles in school, but his mother, Dawn (Karen Pittman), a successful executive — it’s one of those jobs that requires barking into a phone while walking quickly through a room — has supplied him with tutors and wants big things from him; he’s not sure what he wants. (Mother and son alike may be putting perhaps too much faith in Justin’s ability to shoot three-pointers when it comes to college admissions.) His father, Eric (Wood Harris), who cooks for the family and runs restaurants — including, in this TV reality, the real-life Linden, a Hollywood center of Black society — and never went to college, is more easygoing. (“Life works things out when it’s supposed to,” says he.)
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The kids are honest and sincere, not stuck up, not phony. Keisha seems a little more on top of things, life-wise, though she will jump to conclusions. Justin, less interested in whatever high-powered business future his mother imagines for him, dreams of a career in music, which in this context means “making beats.” Though Simone and Cooper are not actual teenagers, they are fresh-faced and radiant and youthful; they’re pretty adorable. Their parents, too, are likable, loving, hard-working people, a little bossy now and then, but genuinely concerned for their children. As in the real world, the kids handle some of their business better than their elders, and sometimes the elders prove wiser than the kids. (Not too often though — this is a series aimed at young viewers, who won’t have come for a lecture.)
Keisha and Justin bumble into and out of a bad first date, but before too long, he’s texting her, “think I woke up with a girlfriend can u confirm” and she is replying “how can I be ur girlfriend if u haven’t asked me.” (He will.) Things get better and worse and better, happier and sadder and so on, as the couple travels through eight episodes of mostly ordinary drama — jealousy and insecurity, mopiness and mooniness, desolation and elation, miscommunication and reconciliation — on the way to maturity. They’ll get into minor trouble with school and parents. The infamous sex tape — something shot by Keisha’s former boyfriend, Christian (Xavier Mills), but distributed by an offscreen character — leads to a conversation or two, but is more or less old news by the time story begins. Justin isn’t bothered.
Interestingly for a modern teen show, nobody’s getting drunk or doing drugs, apart from a couple of pot-smoking adults and flirty old friend Shannon (Zora Casebere), who comes on to Justin during the family’s annual summer decampment to Martha’s Vineyard. “I want you to be my first,” she says, “It would be awkward and we would laugh through it.” He thinks love should have something to do with it.
As a coming-of-age story, it’s more about the electrifying present than the unwritten future, however often that future comes up for discussion. Ultimately, it leads our heroes to the common enough question of what happens to their union after graduation. Not to give anything away, but anyone who’s survived their youth will understand that the title is ironic — or, with Blume’s ellipses, reattached for the title of the final episode, at least inconclusive.
Scarlett Johansson wasn’t on the hunt for a feature film to direct when she was sent “Eleanor the Great,” about a 90-something woman who reminded Johansson of her own sparky grandmother. But Tory Kamen’s script arrived with a cover letter from Oscar nominee June Squibb.
“I was really interested in what, at this stage, June wanted to star in,” she says. “I was compelled to read it because of that.”
What Johansson also learned is that Squibb, star of last year’s acclaimed caper “Thelma” and the voice of Nostalgia in “Inside Out 2,” adds extra gloss to a project and is genre-adaptable. Since “Eleanor,” she’s wrapped shooting on an indie mockumentary called “The Making of Jesus Diabetes,” starring and produced by Bob Odenkirk. (“Bob and I know each other from ‘Nebraska,’” she says. “He asked and I did one scene.”) Currently, she’s in the play “Marjorie Prime,” her first appearance on Broadway since “Waitress” in 2018, when she stepped into the role of Old Joe, previously occupied by Al Roker. (“They made [the character] into a lady for me.”)
Recently, Johansson and Squibb got together via Zoom to discuss lurching process trailers, how Squibb bonded with co-star Erin Kellyman (who plays Nina, Eleanor’s college-age friend), and the trick to playing a character who tells a whopper at a Holocaust survivors’ support group based on her dead best friend’s experience.
Squibb, left, Erin Kellyman and Chiwetel Ejiofor in “Eleanor the Great.”
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(Jojo Whilden / Sony Pictures Cla)
What does a first-time director plan for Day One of a wintertime shoot in New York?
Johansson: The first thing we shot was [Eleanor and Nina] arriving at Coney Island. It wasn’t easy. We were outside. It was cold. It was a little hectic, but we figured it out. Then we had to do this thing in a car, and it was just miserable. Nobody wants to shoot a scene being towed in a car. There are all these stops and starts. You get nauseous. I felt terrible about that. But it was good for June and Erin.
Squibb: We had a lot of time that day together and we liked who each other was. It was just easy.
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June, you believe in showing up fully prepped, on script. Did you and Scarlett talk a lot about Eleanor?
Squibb: I’m sure we talked over that first two weeks, but I think we started delving when we started shooting. I can’t say this enough, but her being the actress she is? It just helped me tremendously. I felt so relaxed, like she knew what I was doing.
A less charismatic actor might have trouble pulling off this character. Eleanor can be so impertinent, yet the audience still has to like her.
Johansson: The tightrope June walks is that she’s able to be salty, inconsiderate and rude as the Eleanor character, then balance it out with quiet moments where you see the guard slip. You see the vulnerability of [Eleanor]. June plays that so beautifully.
June, in 1953, you converted to Judaism. Scarlett, how important was it to have Eleanor played by a Jewish actress?
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Johansson: It was definitely important to me, and it became important to the production too. We had tremendous support from the Jewish community. We brought the script to the Shoah Foundation and they helped us craft [Eleanor’s best friend] Bessie’s survivor story.
(The Tyler Times / For The Times)
Did they also help you find real-life Holocaust survivors — like Sami Steigmann —that you cast as support group members?
Johansson: It was a real group effort. Every time someone joined, it was a huge celebration. We got another one! At the time there were, like, 225,000 [survivors] worldwide. It gets less every year. I think only two of [the survivors in the group] knew each other previously. None of them had ever been on a film set before, and they were so patient with us.
Squibb: We just sort of passed the time of day. Sami, who was sitting next to me, and I chatted. It was all very relaxed. They were having a good time. They were interested in lunch. I remember that.
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Johansson: I talked to everyone individually. Quite a lot of them are public speakers and share their stories. It’s amazing. You’re talking to people in their 90s about an experience they had when they were 7. Their stories are so vivid in their minds. Sami told June that sharing the story is part of the healing.
June, for a bat mitzvah scene you memorized a complicated Torah portion. How did it go?
Squibb: It wasn’t easy to learn. I didn’t do it overnight. But we were in a beautiful synagogue, and it was great to stand there and do it. I enjoyed it.
Talk about finding out that it didn’t make the final cut.
Squibb: I think the first thing I asked [Scarlett was], [sounding peeved] “Where did my Torah portion go?” [laughs]
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Johannson: It was, like, “What the hell happened?” [laughs, then winces] I really struggled. But every way I cut it, it didn’t work so it just had to go. I was pretty nervous to show it [to June]. I said to Harry, my editor, “She worked so hard on it.”
How about that five-minute standing ovation when “Eleanor” has its world premiere at Cannes?
Squibb: It was just terribly exciting. We hugged each other a lot. And Erin was there, and she was in our hug too. I kept thinking, “We’re not even at a lovely theater in America. My God, this is an international audience here and they’re loving it.” And they did.
The Timothée Chalamet movie that’s arriving on Christmas Day is “a 150-minute-long heart attack of a film,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In “a career-best turn” that’s “a feverish go-for-broke tour de force,” Chalamet plays Marty Mauser, an aspiring table tennis champ in 1950s New York City who’s ready to lie, cheat, and steal for the chance to become the best in the world. This first film from director Josh Safdie since 2019’s Uncut Gems turns out to be a character study that “doubles as a cracked American success story,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Marty is a scrawny kid with a pathetic mustache, but he’s also a fast-talking grifter with supreme self-confidence, and his game earns him a trip to London and the world championship tournament before a humbling stokes his hunger for a comeback.
Surrounding Chalamet is “a supporting cast you’d swear was assembled via Mad Libs,” because it features Fran Drescher, Penn Jillette, Tyler the Creator, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, and—as a faded movie star Marty sweet-talks into an affair—Gwyneth Paltrow, “reminding you how good she was before Goop became her full-time gig.” To me, it’s the story beneath the story that makes Safdie’s “nerve-jangling, utterly exhilarating” movie one of the best of the year, said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. “It’s about a Jewish kid who knows just what kind of antisemitism and finely stratified racial dynamics he’s up against in postwar America, and who is using every means at his disposal to smack back.”
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‘Is This Thing On?’
Directed by Bradley Cooper (R)
★★★
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“There are far worse things that a gifted filmmaker could offer an audience these days than a feel-good divorce comedy,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. But it’s still slightly disappointing that screen star Bradley Cooper has followed up A Star Is Born and Maestro with this minor work, due Dec. 19, about a father of two who starts doing stand-up in New York City to cope with the likely end of his marriage. With Will Arnett and Laura Dern as its co-stars, Is This Thing On? is “an observant, bittersweet, and highly watchable movie,” but it’s also so eager to hide the agonies of divorce that it “can feel like it’s cutting corners.”
The 124-minute film “doesn’t really get going until hour two,” said Ryan Lattanzio in IndieWire. Until then, it’s “lethargic and listless,” slowed by long takes “that drag on and on.” Fortunately, Arnett and Dern have real chemistry that kicks in when Dern’s Tess accidentally catches Arnett’s Alex performing his bit about their sidelined marriage and sees him with new eyes. Good as Arnett is, “it’s Dern who’s the revelation as a woman who truly doesn’t know what she wants and is figuring it out in real time,” said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. Cooper, playing a reprobate friend of Alex’s, gives himself the script’s biggest laughs. More importantly, he proves again to be a director with “a real flair for domestic drama.”
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“Saturday Night Live” hosts typically make their mark on the show, either by boosting the sketches they’re in with charm and good timing or making a lesser kind of mark by awkwardly revealing why they aren’t right for live sketch comedy.
So what are we supposed to make of British actor Josh O’Connor, who hosted “SNL” for the first time and left almost no impression at all?
O’Connor, known for playing Prince Charles in “The Crown” and for performances in “Challengers” and the new Netflix movie “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” seemed game enough, but throughout most of the show he had little opportunity to do much more than blend into sketches centered around characters he was not playing.
He played supporting parts including the Tin Man in a revamped “Wizard of Oz” sketch involving the male characters deciding they actually want a “big old thang” instead of their original wishes, a fellow student in a sketch about a 12-year-old college prodigy (Bowen Yang), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in a Christmas characters piece that was a take on Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” and an awkward brunch attendee.
Only in a few sketches, including a “Dating Game” parody featuring Ashley Padilla as a rowdy 84-year-old contestant; a hospital sketch in which he played a bad intern; and one in which O’Connor and Ben Sherman played sensitive male strippers at a bachelorette party did he have lead roles. And they weren’t particularly memorable characters or portrayals. Only when he kissed fellow cast members at the end of sketches (Yang and Sherman) did things seem to liven up.
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In fact, it felt more like a spotlight episode for Yang — who played the Wizard; the fast-talking, high-attitude Doctor Please in the hospital sketch; and the 12-year-old college student — and for musical guest Lily Allen. Allen’s scathing performances of “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline” from her new breakup-with-David Harbour album were high drama. The latter song featured a big surprise: Actor Dakota Johnson spoke from behind a scrim as the titular character and then appeared next to Allen when the song ended. Another Allen song, “West End Girl,” was the subject of an entire brunch sketch in which cast members sang about their feelings to the tune of the music. Allen showed up as herself but filling in as a waitress at their table.
It’s hard to say if the material just misfired for O’Connor or if he’s just an awkward fit for “SNL,” but unfortunately what stood out in the episode had little to do with him.
In addition to the sketches, this “SNL” episode included a Christmas-themed “Brad and His Dad” animated short.
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Ready for another President Trump-centered cold open? Sorry, you got one anyway. James Austin Johnson once again aced his impression of Trump with a stream-of-consciousness ramble for reporters aboard Air Force One that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (Ashley Padilla) attributed to exhaustion. “I took an Ambien and an Adderall, let’s see which one wins,” said Trump before inappropriately fixating on Leavitt’s lips and denying that affordability is a problem. “Economy is very strong,” he said, “from the billionaires all the way down to the poor millionaires.” Trump addressed attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying, “We’re doing pirate now, argh,” and promising that attacks would move from the sea to the air, leading to a visual joke of Santa Claus and his reindeer on radar being shot out of the sky.
O’Connor’s monologue focused on two things those unfamiliar with his acting should know about him: that he has a reputation as a “soft boy,” someone who embroiders, scrapbooks and gardens like an “average 65-year-old woman.” The other is that he resembles chef Linguini from the Pixar film “Ratatouille,” and though a rumor that he wanted to play the character in a live-action version was unfounded, he would very much like to play that character. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I would kill as Linguini.”
Best sketch of the night: You ate how many nuggets this year?
Even though it’s already well-trod meme material (including an almost identical comic strip’s premise), “SNL” was still able to squeeze some juice from Spotify’s Wrapped, a year-in-review feature that returned for another round earlier in the week. Uber Eats has a year-in-review, too, and you absolutely don’t want your significant other to see what fast food you’ve ordered and whether you’re in the top 1% of nugget eaters. If your Uber Eats age is “52 and Fat,” it may not be knowledge you wish to have. The mock commercial does a great job balancing the shame we feel about the awful foods we eat with the amount of data we could learn about those habits, if only anyone ever wanted to see that.
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Also good: These kind male strippers give the best empathy hugs
A bachelorette party at a cozy cabin is interrupted by two hired male strippers, Augie and Remington (Sherman and O’Connor), who ask for consent before entering and are soon removing their cardigans to reveal another layer of cardigan. The men dance to an emo version of “Pony” before revealing that one of them has a Zohran (Mamdani) tattoo on his stomach. They give lap dances, but one of them gets overstimulated and cries. “I was just thinking about the Supreme Court,” he moans. Not the most original sketch idea, but the specific details of the characters and Padilla’s smitten reactions as the bachelorette saved the sketch from overstaying its welcome.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: Superheroes, Santa and your boss all want you to behave
Jane Wickline did a nice job with a surprisingly violent original song about stopping the biggest threat facing the world: not AI, but the grown-up child actors from “Stranger Things.” But it was Marcello Hernández who got big laughs recounting what Christmas is like for his Cuban family. It includes dealing with new boyfriends of family members pretending to be who they aren’t. “You don’t like the food, Kyle, you like having sex with my cousin!” Hernández wandered a bit, straying to talk about “Home Alone” and uncles who give unsolicited sex advice, but the heart of the segment was impressions of his father calling to encourage his son as different characters including Santa Claus, Spider-Man and his boss, Lorne Michaels.
