Growing up While the World Changes

Read Time:5 Minute, 27 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Fairyland
–

Genre: Drama, Coming-of-age, LGBTQIA2S+
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 56m
Director(s): Andrew Durham
Writer(s): Andrew Durham (based on the memoir by Alysia Abbott)
Cast: Emilia Jones, Scoot McNairy, Cody Fern, Maria Bakalova, Bella Murphy, Nessa Dougherty, Adam Lambert, Geena Davis
Where to Watch: in select theaters October 10, 2025

RAVING REVIEW: The heartbeat of this story is small, human, and resilient. FAIRYLAND traces a father-daughter bond through years when San Francisco felt like a home for reinvention—first euphoric, then devastating. It refuses melodrama and loud marks, favoring the fragile honesty of two people figuring each other out in real time. It isn’t trying to be a grand statement so much as a lived-in memory: the awkwardness of new routines, the quiet stubbornness of love, the mistakes we defend until we can’t anymore.

Andrew Durham’s approach is observational, letting rooms, sidewalks, and bedrooms do as much talking as the characters. The film is based on Alysia Abbott’s memoir, and you can feel the vantage point—memories refracted through a child who becomes a teenager and then an adult, carrying both affection and frustration for a parent still discovering himself. Structurally, it unfolds as a series of finely etched moments rather than an overbearing plot. That will read as gentle and humane to some viewers; its commitment to the texture of everyday life pays off. It captures how adolescence doesn’t pause just because a parent is exploring identity or navigating a community’s crisis.

Emilia Jones anchors the film with an alert, open performance. She doesn’t oversell the character’s transformations; she lets them accumulate—small irritations, short exchanges, and the occasional eruption feel of a piece with the larger journey. There’s a measured intelligence in how she plays curiosity—watching, absorbing, choosing when to push back and when to retreat. Scoot McNairy, meanwhile, walks the tightrope of a father who is both liberating and unreliable, charismatic and distracted. He’s affectionate, sometimes selfish, frequently flawed, and fully human. The film doesn’t sanitize him as a saint or punish him as a joke; it allows him to be a man who’s learning how to be both himself and a parent at the same time.

The parenting here isn’t irresponsible because it’s queer, and it isn’t ideal because it’s free-spirited. It’s complicated because real parenting is complicated. The film is at its strongest when it treats queerness not as a dramatic twist but as an everyday truth. In keeping with that, the backdrop of San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s is created with a specificity that’s more tactile than touristic.

As the AIDS crisis arrives, the film’s tone shifts without becoming opportunistic or sentimental. The loss that follows is not played as a single crescendo but as the slow erosion of a community that had just taught itself how to breathe. The decision to keep the camera close is wise; the intimacy makes the grief feel personal rather than historical. The film honors LGBTQIA2S+ lives by focusing on individual relationships—friendships, romances, and chosen family—so that when absence appears, it isn’t an abstract tragedy; it’s the empty chair at the kitchen table.

Performance-wise, the ensemble gives the leads a varied landscape to work against. Cody Fern and Maria Bakalova offer distinct presences that help map the father’s world; Adam Lambert and Geena Davis add intrigue without overshadowing the core relationship. The child-to-teen handoff to Nessa Dougherty is handled with care—there’s continuity in posture and watchfulness, which keeps the perspective coherent. The dialogue often reads as if it were overheard rather than written. While a few lines stand out, most of the time the film’s language remains comfortably human, with interruptions, half-thoughts, and unresolved sentences intact.

The film’s attention to boundaries—how they shift, how they’re negotiated, and how love can blur them is so powerful. Moments where the daughter has to parent the parent land with quiet force, not because the film condemns anyone, but because it recognizes the cost of that role reversal. If you look for sweeping pronouncements, you might miss the beauty of the small corrections—how a look changes across a dinner, how a goodbye is delayed by one extra hug, how pride said aloud can resound louder than love whispered. Those are the film’s emotional signatures, and they linger.

The honesty it achieves is considerable. It situates a father-daughter bond within a cultural context without reducing either to a mere backdrop for the other. It remembers that history is not only dates and headlines; it’s apartments, jobs, deadlines, and grocery lists—and the love that holds those things together when it can. FAIRYLAND is tender, considerate work—memorable in its textures, more powerful in its small truths than any single speech. It left me thinking about the difference between saying “I love you” and saying “I’m proud of you,” and how both, timed right, can alter the course of a life.

Please visit https://linktr.ee/overlyhonestr for more reviews.

You can follow me on Letterboxd, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. My social media accounts can also be found on most platforms by searching for 'Overly Honest Reviews'.

I’m always happy to hear from my readers; please don't hesitate to say hello or send me any questions about movies.

[photo courtesy of LIONSGATE, WILLA]

DISCLAIMER:
At Overly Honest Movie Reviews, we value honesty and transparency. Occasionally, we receive complimentary items for review, including DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, Vinyl Records, Books, and more. We assure you that these arrangements do not influence our reviews, as we are committed to providing unbiased and sincere evaluations. We aim to help you make informed entertainment choices regardless of our relationship with distributors or producers.

Amazon Affiliate Links:
Additionally, this site contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may receive a commission. This affiliate arrangement does not affect our commitment to honest reviews and helps support our site. We appreciate your trust and support in navigating these links.