{"id":10048,"date":"2025-10-07T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=10048"},"modified":"2025-10-06T17:57:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T22:57:23","slug":"growing-up-while-the-world-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/growing-up-while-the-world-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing up While the World Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 10 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nFairyland<\/strong>
\n –\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong> <\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Drama, Coming-of-age, LGBTQIA2S+
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2025
\nRuntime: <\/strong>1h 56m
\nDirector(s): <\/strong>Andrew Durham
\nWriter(s): <\/strong>Andrew Durham (based on the memoir by Alysia Abbott)
\nCast:<\/strong> Emilia Jones, Scoot McNairy, Cody Fern, Maria Bakalova, Bella Murphy, Nessa Dougherty, Adam Lambert, Geena Davis
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>in select theaters October 10, 2025<\/p>\n

\n

RAVING REVIEW:\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>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\u2014first 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\u2019t 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\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n

\n

Andrew Durham\u2019s approach is observational, letting rooms, sidewalks, and bedrooms do as much talking as the characters. The film is based on Alysia Abbott\u2019s memoir, and you can feel the vantage point\u2014memories 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\u2019t pause just because a parent is exploring identity or navigating a community\u2019s crisis.<\/p>\n

Emilia Jones anchors the film with an alert, open performance. She doesn\u2019t oversell the character\u2019s transformations; she lets them accumulate\u2014small irritations, short exchanges, and the occasional eruption feel of a piece with the larger journey. There\u2019s a measured intelligence in how she plays curiosity\u2014watching, 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\u2019s affectionate, sometimes selfish, frequently flawed, and fully human. The film doesn\u2019t sanitize him as a saint or punish him as a joke; it allows him to be a man who\u2019s learning how to be both himself and a parent at the same time.<\/p>\n

The parenting here isn\u2019t irresponsible because it\u2019s queer, and it isn\u2019t ideal because it\u2019s free-spirited. It\u2019s 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\u2019s more tactile than touristic.<\/p>\n

As the AIDS crisis arrives, the film\u2019s 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\u2014friendships, romances, and chosen family\u2014so that when absence appears, it isn\u2019t an abstract tragedy; it\u2019s the empty chair at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2014there\u2019s 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\u2019s language remains comfortably human, with interruptions, half-thoughts, and unresolved sentences intact.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s attention to boundaries\u2014how they shift, how they\u2019re 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\u2014how 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\u2019s emotional signatures, and they linger.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s apartments, jobs, deadlines, and grocery lists\u2014and the love that holds those things together when it can. FAIRYLAND is tender, considerate work\u2014memorable in its textures, more powerful in its small truths than any single speech. It left me thinking about the difference between saying \u201cI love you\u201d and saying \u201cI\u2019m proud of you,\u201d and how both, timed right, can alter the course of a life.<\/p>\n

Please visit https:\/\/linktr.ee\/overlyhonestr for more reviews.<\/p>\n

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’.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always happy to hear from my readers; please don’t hesitate to say hello or send me any questions about movies.<\/p>\n

[photo courtesy of LIONSGATE, WILLA]<\/em><\/p>\n

DISCLAIMER:<\/strong>
\nAt 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.<\/p>\n

Amazon Affiliate Links:<\/strong>
\nAdditionally, 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.<\/p>\n

\n
\n \n
\n \n \"Happy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Happy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sad\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sad <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Excited\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Excited <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sleepy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sleepy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Angry\"\n <\/a>\n
Angry<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Surprise\"\n <\/a>\n
Surprise<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOVIE REVIEW Fairyland –\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-theaters"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10077,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10048\/revisions\/10077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}