Child It’s You
Studio: Enjoyable Metropolis Editions
Jun 27, 2025
Internet Unique
Senior Jill Rosen (Rosanna Arquette) is your normal overachiever: a powerful pupil, lecturers’ pet, and star of her highschool drama membership. There’s little tying her right down to Trenton, save for an uncommon younger man from the other facet of the tracks. Sheik (Vincent Spano) is an aspiring lounge singer, a quick dresser, and a low-level hoodlum. The couple appear mismatched in each conventional method, however Jill and Sheik are smitten with each other. It’s her desires of changing into a severe actress–and his unhealthy habits–which threaten to get in the way in which.
Child It’s You (1983) feels way more natural than many teen-focused movies of its period, and it’s no shock that the story was impressed by the experiences of its co-producer, Amy Robinson. The movie’s setting and time interval (New Jersey, 1966) are well-realized, and the connection on-screen is each bit as messy as many adolescent flings are usually. Sheik’s remedy of Jill is commonly tremendous shitty, and he or she’s repeatedly able to overlook that, which feels trustworthy, though it makes it exhausting for viewers members to root for them to remain collectively.
The place Child It’s You turns into extra attention-grabbing is in its second half, when the film leaves behind its highschool trappings and follows their robust transitions to the world past their hometown. Jill finds herself in an all-girls college, now not probably the most gifted child on stage, and changing into progressively extra liberal in her perspective and behaviors. Sheik is on the lam in Florida, however he appears to lastly be taking steps towards doing one thing together with his life. They’re nonetheless loopy about one another, however their new conditions haven’t made them any simpler a match than they have been earlier than.
The movie’s greatest components are its agency sense of time and place—a couple of weirdly-placed Springsteen needle drops are jarring, however simply shaken off—and its two leads. Arquette has been deservedly praised for her efficiency, however Spano is especially underrated right here in a troublesome position. Sheik is the kind of character who would’ve been match for Nic Cage, who would have made it work however made him by some means appear much more weird; Spano manages to not solely floor the character, however make him likeable (not less than, for big components of the movie.)
FCE offers Child’s It You an opportunity at rediscovery with this strong particular version Blu-ray launch. There are a pair of essays and a brand new audio commentary, however most spectacular is the disc’s packed roster of all-new, on-camera interviews, which incorporates director John Sayles, co-producer Amy Robinson (who additionally steered the story), and producer Griffin Dunne, plus actors Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Spano and Matthew Modine. Restored from a brand new 4K scan, the image high quality can also be very sturdy.