Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Why Women Talk And Men Walk… Within the self-help genre, there seems to be an entire sub-section of books devoted to the differences, perceived or otherwise, between genders. The gist is that human beings can be divided into two distinct, reductive species: one that likes to talk about its feelings and one that doesn’t. And as Mr Jonah Hill’s new film Mid90s demonstrates, at no time is this more apparent than during the hormonal turbulence of adolescence.

Written and directed by the actor and scumbro-style pioneer, the film is a homage to the 1990s, but could easily be titled Why Girls Wait While Boys Skate. It centres around 13-year-old Stevie, played by child actor and real-life skateboarder Mr Sunny Suljic, who previously featured in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. Stevie lives in Los Angeles with his mother and his hostile, fitness-obsessed elder brother Ian (Mr Lucas Hedges). Driven out of the house by a thirst for independence – and to avoid another beating from his brother – Stevie falls in with a band of skaters who run a local skate shop. Here, for a fairly inexplicable reason, as these things tend to happen, he earns the nickname “Sunburn”.

If, at this point, Mr Hill’s back catalogue has you expecting a stream of fart gags, prepare to be pleasantly surprised (depending on your thoughts on fart gags). Rather than giving each other pink eye, the interactions between the male characters are sensitive and subtle. Sunburn inspires jealousy in Ruben (Mr Gio Galicia), the boy who first brings him into the group, while the bond between core members, the focused Ray (played by skater and Odd Future associate Mr Na-Kel Smith) and party boy Fuckshit (Mr Olan Prenatt), is frayed as each is pulled in a different direction.

Mid90s mirrors Lady Bird (2017) in many ways. Both are semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales. Each is the directorial debut by an actor of the same generation (both Mr Hill and Lady Bird creator Ms Greta Gerwig are 35) and a period piece set in its maker’s hometown in California. And in Mr Hedges, both films also share a cast member. But where in Lady Bird, Mr Hedges plays a clean-cut poster boy coming to terms with his sexuality (he’s Catholic and gay), as the closed-off, monosyllabic, bench-pressing bro in Mid90s, he regularly uses homophobic slurs as an insult. (A recurring conundrum in the film is whether saying “thank you” is “gay” or not. It sounds shocking today, when you’d hope the question would be why “gay” is being used in a pejorative sense at all.)

What both films are really about – perhaps because of each director’s attempt to re-engage with their own roots – is family, whether biological or surrogate, and finding your place in the world. And while the protagonist of Lady Bird has more lofty ambitions – going to college in New York, rather than learning how to skate – Stevie is only 13, so give him time.

Lady Bird was conceived as a reaction to male-oriented coming-of-age tales. “Gerwig says she definitely sought to offer a female counterpart to tales like The 400 Blows and Boyhood,” Rolling Stone magazine reported in 2017. Mid90s, too, is a riposte, not just to cinema’s more articulate teenagers, who’s snappy zingers seem out of sync with the awkward reality of adolescence, but the concept of what a young man should be.

Skateboarding itself is a demonstration of Mr Malcolm Gladwell’s rule that it takes 10,000 hours to be an expert at something. Growing up takes a lot of practice, too. Here, Stevie is finding his feet, both on the board and within a social group. These characters inhabit a timeline that exists long before “wokeness” gained traction, but in their own clumsy ways, they reveal that they at least care for each other. Being a teenager is confusing, often frustrating, but sometimes exciting. The trick is how you deal with this rush of feelings.

In delving into the hip-hop of the period, we can at least agree that Mid90s has a banging soundtrack (as well as a score composed by Messrs Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who, in another incarnation, were part of 1990s industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails). Think Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, The Pharcyde, Cypress Hill and Souls Of Mischief – Del the Funky Homosapien even makes a cameo as a homeless man, alongside pro skater Mr Chad Muska.

But it’s what the film keeps bottled up that makes it interesting. Much like its lead, Mid90s says a lot without saying very much at all.