The Sundance Film Festival is a good place for burgeoning filmmakers to get their first taste of fame. If they have a film that resonates with audiences like last year’s Past Lives or Coda from a few years ago it can propel their careers. Well, that’s the case with Laura Chinn and her debut Suncoast. It’s got a good cast and a story that a lot of Americans can relate to.

Doris, (Nico Parker) named after her grandmother who passed away the day she was born is a normal teenager who attends a Christian school in Clearwater, Florida. She lives with her overbearing mother Kristine (Laura Linney) and her blind and ill brother. This story takes place in the early 2000s right around the Terri Schiavo case was all over the news. Doris’ mother decides to take her brother to a medical facility that also houses Schiavo. During this time and place it’s a media circus. Needless to say, a restless teenager isn’t about all of this. She just wants to do what teens do in high school, party.

This is more or less a coming-of-age movie though the character played by Parker is having a bit of a hard time and when she makes some new friends in high school typical teen angst happens. She rebels against her mother who has other things on her plate and mind to worry about her teen daughter. While in her teenage girl mode, Parker’s character befriends an activist played by Woody Harrelson. He tries to help her understand what her mother is going through and how the world doesn’t revolve around her. This is coming of age one oh one but there’s a little bit more to this story than meets the eye.

The Terri Schiavo story was a huge thing that was going on in the country at that time. Pull the plug,  or in this case ventilator, or not to pull the plug that was the question. The Academy Award-winning Best Picture from 2005 from Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby, touched on this subject matter back then but this is a more autobiographical story based on Chinn’s life growing up. That film hit me pretty hard and this one is definitely good but it’s not as hard-hitting as Million Dollar Baby was. I felt more connected to that story and the emotions hit me pretty hard almost twenty years ago. Maybe it’s because of the coming-of-age aspect of the story. Who knows?

Laura Linney is a great actress. She is an awards-worthy type of actress. She has found a niche in the Netflix drama Ozark opposite Jason Bateman and Julia Garner but her earlier work in Primal Fear as a lawyer, Mystic River as a wife of a grieving husband, and The Truman Show as Truman Burbank’s fake wife were all more up her alley as an actress. I feel this role as a mother juggling multiple things including a dying son is a bit off base for her. She’s fine but not great like I’ve come to expect from her.  Hopefully, she gets back to that actress I’ve known her for in the past.

Every once in a while you find young actors or actresses to blow you away and that’s the case with Nico Parker, who made her debut in the Tim Burton live-action remake of Dumbo. She brings a different vibe to this movie than that one. She channels girls of her own age perfectly in this film. The stuff she does and says is typical of most teenage girls of that age. Even though she’s done work before this is more of a revelatory performance from her. She stands head above heels better than the rest of the class, pun intended, including the established stars like Linney and Harrelson.  I think she’s got a good career ahead of her.

Suncoast refers to the facility that Linney’s character takes her son to that just happens to be the same location as Terri Schiavo but it also describes the west side of Florida in which this film takes place. Florida plays a huge part in the story and I was glad to see that. There are a lot of great things about Florida that can be explored in movies such as this one. Florida has it all and it’s about time filmmakers took advantage of that even though some of the movie was shot in South Carolina. As a stand-in for Florida, it was pretty good.

Suncoast is a good debut for Chinn. It had a lot going for it. It just didn’t blow me away like I hoped it would. The cast of veterans is good but the standout is young Parker as Doris. She channels a teenage girl perfectly.  The coming-of-age subject matter with the Schiavo case as a backdrop was pretty good. I just wished it had been a little bit better.  A lot of people will see this on Hulu though so that’s a good thing. Searchlight has a few other films coming out this year so let’s hope they are great. Which this one is not. 

3 ½

Dan Skip Allen