The Most Perfect Coming-of-Age Comedy Is What You Need Now On Netflix

By Robert Scucci | Published 39 seconds ago

Roger Ebert summed it up perfectly The solar when he said that “this movie had seduced me with its reminders of what really matters when you’re 12,” and I can’t think of a better way to describe it. Literally nothing happens in The solar in the sense that the kids at their center are just living their lives and playing baseball. For them, however, it’s all a life-changing event because they’re kids on summer vacation, there’s a scary dog lurking behind Mr. Mertle’s fence, and they want to play ball all day like their lives depend on it.

I don’t say this as an accusation of The Sandlot basic structure of the story, but as a way to celebrate it. It’s fun, it’s light-hearted, and while you can look at the title cynically as an adult, there’s no other movie that brings back memories of the days when insignificant moments seemed to define your entire existence. Just like in real life, sometimes the plot doesn’t matter. However, the memories you make while your parents let you wander around the neighborhood, waiting for you to come home when the street lights come on, are priceless.

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The children and the beast

The solar centers on young Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry), whose preteen years are narrated by an older version of himself (voiced by writer-director David Mickey Evans). Scotty, a shy new kid in town, feels like an outsider but befriends Benny (Mike Vitar), a boy who eats, sleeps and breathes baseball. The rest of the gang, Ham (Patrick Renna), Yeah-Yeah (Marty York), Kenny (Brandon Quinton Adams), Squints (Chauncey Leopardi), Bertram (Grant Gelt), and brothers Tommy (Shane Obedzinski) and Timmy (Victor DiMattia), are reluctant to let Scotty join their baseball clan, but Benny vouches for him and slowly teaches him to master the game.

The adventures of the boys in The solar It’s all about playing baseball, talking trash, and trying to impress girls, so the stakes are high when you look at it from an adult perspective. However, for a boy, these are crucial moments that test his will and teach him valuable lessons about facing fears, finding confidence, and causing a ruckus in the neighborhood when his antics extend beyond the titular lot.

The main conflict that ties it all together is retrieving Babe Ruth’s autographed baseball from Scotty’s stepfather, which he accidentally smokes over Mr. Mertle’s (James Earl Jones) property line, where a vicious dog known only as “the Beast” guards the backyard. The boys need to come up with a plan to get the ball back and escape the wrath of the Beast, which in their minds is almost mythological.

Nothing ever happens, and that’s the point

It’s easy to criticize slice-of-life and coming-of-age films like The solar because not much happens on the surface. Adventure is mostly in children’s heads because they haven’t yet had the chance to experience the world like their cynical adult counterparts have. The only thing that matters is playing and learning something about themselves as their bond becomes unbreakable.

There is no real antagonist in The solarjust vibes and the kind of youthful exuberance that reminds you of a time when the biggest conflict in your life was jumping a fence to outrun a dog or trying not to throw up on a carnival ride after consuming too much chewing tobacco in an attempt to look cool.

Sometimes you just need a reminder that the simple things in life are worth celebrating. As long as your friends are by your side and you share a common goal, it is easy to get lost in everyday life because when you are a child these days seem like an eternity. A familiar reminder that you may not realize you’re living in the old days until they’re gone. The solar It plays out exactly as you remember, with no real climax or conflict, but plenty of fun living in the moment.