3 out of 5 stars.

Suncoast is a fair coming of age drama film that gives great performances with the cast ensemble.

A tough story about a teenage girl trying to be a normal teen in high school. While struggling with grief with her brother being terminally ill. And her controlling mother struggling with losing him.

It is a tough story. While Nico Parker did a great job. Same with Woody Harrelson. The film can be emotional. It is a strong drama with her growing up. But missing out as a teen. Thats also the one thing the film struggles is missing out on that direction on what happened to her and her friends. The script felt undeveloped.

Laura Chinn's semi autobiographical drama is about her living with his terminally ill brother on his last days at an hospice and her need for more attention as a teenager, considering her mother devoted all her time on the brother. During this, Doris makes friends in her class and finds solace in brief interaction with an activist, outside the hospice. Torn between having to lead her own life and simultaneously having to pause it to prioritize her brother, Laura narrates a coming of age tale about handling grief and growing up with it.

It is indeed a touching story and Nico Parker as Doris was a perfect cast and she truly stands out in the climax. However, this definitely deserved a better screenplay as well as rounded characters. Laura Linney as Kristine, is reduced to a whiney mother who is completely ignorant towards her daughter. Sure, the circumstances does convey her behavior but it comes out as way too mean. Then there is Woody Harrelson's character which randomly appears few times to share his views with Doris and it looked deliberate. What does work is the life of Doris at school and late night parties, which is the way for her to earn friends and them being actually loyal ones. I wished the dramatic scenes to have been dealt the same way with neatly presented characters.

The dying boy, Max, controls the story, acknowledging that his illness holds the family hostage. Chinn's wit and self-pity make "Suncoast" is not just a film, it's a story about love, Family and overcoming obstacles, and a mother and daughter drive into the ethics of Death. Suncoast, a film premiered at Sundance 2024, is a broad, sunny Searchlight crowd-pleaser that aims to compensate for its lack of originality with charm. The film's first-time writer-director Laura Chinn struggles to deliver genuine emotion, making it best for low-investment audiences. Suncoast features a coming-of-age narrative of a girl named Doris, who pushes herself out of the shadows at school, making friends with girls she's previously ignored and flirting with a guy she's never thought she was good enough for. The family drama follows Doris's clash with a difficult mother who cares for her non-communicative son dying of cancer, causing their relationship to suffer. The film also features an unlikely friendship between Doris and an eccentric grieving husband protesting outside the hospice where her brother is being cared for. Suncoast, based on Chinn's experiences as a teenager in the mid-00s, is influenced by the dramedies released at the time. Linney delivers a strong performance, but her portrayal of a working-class Floridian waiting tables is difficult to fully buy. Parker is charming but too refined to sell a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. The pair do a decent amount of lifting, but they are never immersed enough in their world to believe them as anything more than actors. Harrelson's inclusion is in full sleepwalk mode, making the story feel less real and lacking any narrative sense. The film is in need of more reality and more depth. The high school drama Suncoast is a comedy that struggles with familiarity and familiarity, but its mother-daughter conflict is the most affecting. The character of Linney, who is unable to let her child's death consume her, is portrayed as a character who can be unpleasant to be around. The film struggles with authenticity, but the character's knottier nature makes it feel the most authentic. Suncoast settles for amiable competency, but never truly leaves a lasting impact on the audience. Laura Chinn's memoir "Acne" is a survivalist tale about her parents' distractions and the dark side of life. In her feature debut, "Suncoast," Chinn fictionalizes the story of her brother's slow death from brain cancer at the same Florida hospice as Terri Schiavo, a vegetative patient whose right to die became a moral and legal issue in 2005. The film follows the daily surreal reality of Doris and Kristine, navigating a group of protesters who call the hospice an execution chamber. Linney portrays Kristine as a martyr with a temper, fearing she will miss Max's last breath. She abandons Doris and forgets her daughter exists. The script flattens Doris into a shy innocent, a sympathetic template of a good kid. Despite this, the film's truths about witnessing a loved one's decline are admirable. For example, Paul, a big-hearted but obstinate Schiavo protester, prays for Max's survival, but Doris refuses.