Jesse Eisenberg was Oscar-nominated for his fast-talking turn as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network – a performance that persuaded the world to think of the Facebook supremo as a garrulous, injured soul. He is also the author of accomplished stage plays, short stories and pieces for the New Yorker. Now he makes his feature film debut as a writer-director with a sweet-natured and well acted movie about Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), an insufferable and naive teenage boy in high school, who preens himself on all the followers he has for his livestreamed folk-rock songs, with titles such as Truth Aches. His equally insufferable but idealistic mother, Evelyn (Julianne Moore), kindly, if overbearingly, runs a shelter for abused women.
Secretly hurt at the way her son has moved away from her into the world of lo-fi online celebrity – Ziggy has rigged up a big flashing red light outside his bedroom to warn his parents not to come in while he’s broadcasting to the fanbase – Evelyn befriends the bewildered teenage son of one of the women at her refuge. She tells her protege how to better himself and apply for college, “grooming” him as the obedient, grateful son she never had.
