"I don't like it": another youth hit from Netflix, which can be seen in the evening

About a high school student who destroys everything around

The first season “I don’t like it” was published on Netflix - a series that instantly has become a hit and has been heading the Russian top of the most popular streaming service show for more than a week. The main character is a high school student Sidney from a small American town who suddenly discovers supernatural abilities. We tell you what this show, the first season of which can be seen in one evening, differs from “ very strange deeds ” or “ sex education ”, and why it is worth following it.

Sidney Novak (Sofia Lillis from “ It ”) lives in the small city of Browswille in Pennsylvania, who became famous for the dirtiest air in the United States. She calls herself “the most ordinary 17-year-old boring girl”, and she completely suits her. Sidney is friends with a girl who is popular at school, who is buried by the star of the local football team, and with his strangely -related Stanley neighbor, who smokes grass, listens to the Bloodwitch group (invented by the series by Blur guitarist Graham Coxon). Stanley obviously sympathizes with the main character, but not everything is smooth in the Sidney family: his father recently committed suicide, leaving several secrets behind, and relations with his mother, always disappearing at work, are not established after the tragedy.

Otherwise, the life of Sydney is filled with familiar teenage torment: sexual self -determination, light drugs and first disappointments. The routine is interrupted when the girl manifests supernatural abilities-at the moments of anger or panic, Sydney can easily with the power of thought to dump a tree, throw a ball of bowling into someone or make the offender go from the nose. Where did these abilities come from, Sidney, of course, does not know and is afraid to tell someone about them.

“I don’t like it” - a new project by the director of the “End of ******* mira” by Jonathan Entvistla and a production duo from “Very strange deeds” by Sean Levy and Dan Cohen. This is another show in, perhaps, the most in demand today by the serial genre - the youth retro about high school students. The series is assembled from predictable, proven elements: nostalgia, frank conversations about sex and growing up, as always a bright soundtrack, mysticism and curtsies towards John Hughes’s films and all the cinema of the 1980s. The project is clearly made at once for two audiences: modern high school students and their young parents, who will hook stylization to the times of their childhood.

There is really a lot of references to the films of John Hughes, especially to the legendary "Breakfast Club". But there are other signs of time: in the first and final shots, Carrie Brian de Palma is guessed; The diary, which is leading the main character, hints at Michael Lemann's “deadly attraction”. There are obvious similarities with the video game Life is Strange , the heroine of which also has supernatural abilities. And this is far from all noticeable references to the show. Roxette, Roxy Music and even Bonnie Tyler sound powerful and to the site behind the frame. Obviously, the authors of the series gathered him from the familiar motives - the artifacts of the time in which they themselves grew up.

The first season consists of seven episodes, each of them lasts no more than half an hour. On the one hand, this is a convenient and sparing personal time format - the whole season you can see in one evening. On the other hand, a very modest timing (a joke, seven episodes of “I don’t like it” last an hour less than the “Irishman” by Martin Scorsese) affects the entire show - the plot is rapidly rushing to the finale, most of the lines begun is ultimately forgotten, and not the story itself comes to the fore, but rather its atmosphere. At first it seems that because of this “I don't like it” literally loses to all competitors. If you need a youth series about sexuality and self-identification, it is better to switch to “sex education”, if about gik culture and supernatural, then there are always “very strange things”, if you pull to the twisted thrillers, it is better to watch the “American vandal”.

But closer to the final, the plan of the creators is revealed. The life of the 1980s and growing up the heroine excite them less and less, fantasy-more and more, it turns out that the most important topic of the show is precisely the superpower of Sydney. She is a classic hero of American comics, an outsider who unexpectedly for everyone, and, first of all, for himself, receives a superpower. As in any similar story, these skills are almost useless in ordinary life: Bruce Wayne also unsuccessfully fought nightmares after the death of his parents, Peter Parker could not stop being a school loser. The power of Sidney Novak is not able to return her father, nor help to make peace with her mother, nor make her liberated, or even overcome acne on the buttocks. According to the covenants of the genre, all this Sidney will have to be decided without the help of their gift. But the gift itself will turn into its powerful protection.

But how exactly she will do this, we will find out, obviously, only in the second season. In the first seven episodes, the authors only manage to arrange the figures on the storyboard, introduce the viewer to the characters, draw the lines of their relationship and lead to the main secret in the final of the season. In fact, this is a prologue or a large pilot of the show, divided into seven small chapters. For those two and a half hours that they last, it is impossible to neither fall in love with the heroes, nor understand what is really happening.

In such a modest form, “I don’t like it” is unlikely to compete with “very strange things” or “sexual education”. Some critics are sure that this show is generally unworthy of attention, and Netflix, approving such a truncated format, simply wanted to make money again. Most likely, this is also true. But with all the artistic shortcomings, “I don’t like it”, it does not annoy, does not require tens of hours of free time from you, and most importantly, it is great intriguing. So much so that I certainly want to see the second season, which will be released only in a year.

Andrey Zagudaev