When she turned 13, “Punky Brewster” star Soleil Moon Frye had done more to impact pop culture than most Americans in her life. (“Santo Macanoli!” And incompatible loudspeaker, anyone?) But, since the show was canceled in 1988, things stopped. It was more or less when Frye started carrying a video camera almost everywhere she went, documenting a one in a million adolescence that was anything but the clean, always sunny TV show that made her famous. Nor will it seem very identifiable to those who worshiped the other celebrities she called friends, even though you have spent the decade with your faces nailed to the walls.
With “Kid 90”, Frye opens the “Pandora’s box” – as she calls the VCR file, diary entries, answering machine messages and so on that she kept locked up for over 20 years – preparing for the that she could find, and how those memories can make her feel. The resulting film, which hits Hulu in the midst of a new wave of nostalgia from the ’80s (including Peacock’s recent reboot of “Punky Brewster”), looks like it must have been a cathartic experience for the former child actor, who has been extremely frank about many personal issues – from peer pressure to teenage plastic surgery – over the years. It turns out that she was holding on a little.
Those waiting for gossip will be delighted by the abundance of cameos from ex-teen heartthrobs – including friends Brian Austin Green (“Knots Landing”), David Arquette (“The Outsiders”), Mark-Paul Gosselaar (“Salvo for the Bell ”) and Leonardo DiCaprio (who works as an executive producer) – even though the details of what any of these kids did together at that time are unclear. There is filming of drinks and drugs, along with the discussion of a non-consensual sexual experience (long buried by Frye) and the loss of virginity with an older actor (whom the film timidly identifies), but it is not clear whether they are the same thing.
Frankly, there is a lot that is unclear about “Kid 90”, which can be a matter of discretion (if Frye was constantly filming among such important friends, surely they would not want these juvenile peccadilloes to be publicly aired all these years later ) or just a consequence of the movie’s Cuisinart aesthetic. This is Frye’s third feature film, following the indie “Wild Horses” and doctor father and daughter “Sonny Boy”, and although filming has been a lifelong obsession, making films does not seem to be his vocation.
The exhaustively fast and consistent montage alternates between low quality camcorder footage, complete with tape hiss and tracking failures, and well-lit contemporary interviews, filmed to look like testimonials from dental whiteners. Frye films herself talking to these old friends (the celebrities mentioned, as well as Stephen Dorff, Balthazar Getty, Heather McComb, Jenny Lewis and Jane’s Addiction leader Perry Farrell), and they are all open and eloquent with her about growth and the cure that they’ve been doing since they were teenagers.
“It’s the strangest period of your life … when you’re probably between 13 and 19, and that’s when we were in front of the camera,” says Gosselaar, suggesting that the experience forces children’s actors to behave like adults before ready. “And that is one of the reasons why I don’t want my children in it,” he adds.
But who wanted that for Frye? In a disposable moment, she suggests that her parents do not put pressure on her. At the very least, it seems that she had an unusually favorable family, which could have protected her from the darkness that consumed so many around her. At one point, Frye enumerates those in his circle who died young, and here, the doctor really begins to feel that he exists only for those who appear in him – an exclusive yearbook full of “keep calm” doodles that have not been examined for decades . Who are these tragic figures? If you weren’t alive or obsessed with celebrities in the 90s, this attention-deficient doctor offers virtually no context.
When “seaQuest DSV” star Jonathan Brandis first appears in one of Frye’s home videos, should the audience remember that he committed suicide at age 27? When the revelation comes – amid an almost incoherent montage of other similar losses – the film does not explain how Frye’s many friends died, as long as viewers would know, or search Google. Honestly, is the fate of porn star Shannon Wilsey known enough (she killed herself after hitting her Corvette) that her ominous clip talking about reckless driving resonated? What common thread, if any, is there among all these premature deaths?
At first, the film looks like an internal account of the coolest kids in the world, before the truly punk self-destruction that followed. But Frye does not necessarily blame the showbiz, who did not know how to deal with his physical transformation right after the end of “Punky Brewster”. A clip from a cameo in “The Wonder Years” shows Kevin (Fred Savage) overreacting to her teenage breasts, which grew so quickly that she opted to have reduction surgery at age 15. It is uncomfortable – but also not surprising – to watch clips in which TV presenters make a crude allusion to the young actor’s physical development. That was in the early 1990s, and even today, commentators and journalists are learning to be sensitive when discussing body image.
Frye suggests that his initial success on TV must have paved the way for serious acting opportunities, although you can count in one hand the number of 90s kids who did it – and the film is strangely deaf to hundreds of thousands of aspiring actors children who would give anything to be in their incompatible shoes. At the time, recording everything seemed to have been a compulsion for Frye, and while there seems to be little rhyme or reason for what she documented, it is a relief that she survived to resolve it on her own. Many of Frye’s colleagues died young, leaving behind no treasure trove of insights into his suffering. But in many ways, Frye’s collage only makes sense to its creator, where someone else could have brought enough distance to put all this material in perspective.