I wish we got more movies like Mile End Kicks, a nostalgia-tinged throwback to the early 2010s centered on the Montreal music scene and the 20-somethings who covered it. We experience this world and all the ups and downs that come along with it through the eyes of 22-year-old music critic Grace (an incredible Barbie Ferreira), who moves to the southeastern Canadian city to write a 33 1/3 book on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. She’s wide-eyed from the moment she gets there, not realizing the bands and band members she’d soon meet, jam out to, and hook up with (or at least try to). A coming-of-age story wrapped in a hazy throwback indie picture and a rom-com backed by a killer soundtrack.
On paper, that sounds like a knockout. This generation’s closest thing to Almost Famous, and honestly, more coming-of-age movies in the vein of Cameron Crowe or Richard Linklater or even contemporaries like Cooper Raiff or Greta Gerwig, I’m all in for. The screenplay, which started life under the working title Anglophone as the winner of a competition for emerging women screenwriters back in 2016, is based in part on Chandler Levack’s own early adulthood before becoming a professional music critic and filmmaker. That autobiographical grounding should give the film the kind of lived-in specificity that separates the great hangout movies from the good ones.
In concept, I’m all ears. In execution, I’m a bit less satisfied. Mile End Kicks is Levack’s second directorial work of 2026 alongside the Sadie Sandler-led Roommates, which is less self-serious and more of an out-and-out comedy. And while Roommates plays like a better straight-to-streaming version of that kind of film, Mile End Kicks is the more ambitious of the two, which makes its shortcomings sting a little more. It lacks the previously mentioned specificity of the best coming-of-age movies and doesn’t have the home run supporting performances around Ferreira to make up for its script’s flaws.
What’s working considerably in the film’s favor is Ferreira herself, who is dialed in here perfectly. The movie is fundamentally about wanting to run away from where you are at just the right age where starting anew feels idyllic and sublime, until you realize how the real world works. An early 20s sabbatical to Montreal to write the first draft of a book on the dime of your editor sounds like a dream until the bill comes due. It’s a feeling the film captures well, and Ferreira carries the emotional weight of it without breaking a sweat.
While in Montreal, Grace engages far less with Morissette’s music than she does with startup four-piece indie punk band Bone Patrol, and in the process tries to start a fling with two separate band members. There’s Archie (eagle-eyed viewers will recognize Devon Bostick as Rodrick from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies), who is celibate due to a case of mouth herpes, and self-absorbed lead singer Chevy, played by Stanley Simons. Neither performance paves the way for much to uncover, and the film’s biggest weakness is its inability to convincingly convey what Grace finds attractive or appealing about either of them. Jay Baruchel turns up as Jeff, Grace’s editor back home, and Juliette Gariépy as Madeleine, a local fixture who befriends Grace and gives the film some of its warmer moments. But the supporting ensemble never quite generates the kind of heat that would push this into something truly special.
The atmosphere makes up for a fair amount of what’s lacking. The feeling of being young and dumb, and the fleeting energy of your early 20s, are all well-decipherable throughout, and the Montreal of 2011 is rendered with enough textural detail that you can almost smell the bar shows and cheap apartments. Cecile Believe’s score and Jeremy Cox’s cinematography give the film a warm, hazy glow that suits the material. I think I might just wish this were a bit better because it’s perfectly okay as it is, but not a standout in the way that a few recent films close in subject matter and tone managed to be. Licorice Pizza, Shithouse, Sorry, Baby all come to mind as movies that stuck the landing more definitively in similar territory.
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But Chandler Levack has now put together two successful mid-budget pictures in the same year, which is no small feat, and I’m genuinely excited to see where her next few films go. The same goes for Barbie Ferreira, who shoulders much of the load here to make this thing tick and proves she’s more than ready to carry a movie on her own.
Score: 6/10
Mile End Kicks (2026)
- Cast: Barbie Ferreira, Devon Bostick, Stanley Simons, Juliette Gariépy, Jay Baruchel
- Director: Chandler Levack
- Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music, Romance
- Runtime: 112 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: April 17, 2026
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