MIGUEL WANTS TO FIGHT -- This Film Doesn't Add Anything New to the Coming-of-Age Genre

Review by Dan Skip Allen

Coming-of-age films come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are better than others, though. Miguel Wants to Fight isn't one of the best coming of age films I've seen. It lacks a realistic approach that could have made it much better. Maybe it is geared towards a younger audience that can relate to it much better than I did, but however you look at it, it's just not very good.

Miguel (Tyler Dean Florez) is a teenager with a group of friends in Syracuse, New York. Sometimes, they get into fights for various reasons, but Miguel doesn't seem to jump in when his friends are fighting, even though his father (Raul Castillo), is a boxing trainer. He is a pacifist.  When he gets some bad news, he decides to show his friend he can fight.

He decides to pick somebody at his school with whom he or one of his friends had a disagreement for one reason or another. The problem is that every time he picks someone to fight, something happens, and he ends up not fighting them. The filmmaker Oz Rodriguez uses boxing-esque subtitles to show the viewers who he plans to fight and on which day.

This film has a feel of a popular anime called One Punch Man. The main character is a fan of martial arts films and fighting shows like this. The filmmaker and writers, Shea Serrano and Jason Concepcion, use dream sequences to depict what these various fights could look like, including one that is animated and is a total tribute to what it's trying to be, One Punch Man. These sequences add a funny element to the film.

Aside from Castillo and Dasha Polanco as the kids' hot English teacher, the cast is filled with many young actors in their first or one of their earliest roles. The four main kid actors are fine. They have good chemistry with each other and the smaller characters in the movie. I just wasn't blown away by their performances. The script doesn't lend itself to hard coming-of-age topics. This story is rather light on those elements.

The comedic nature of a kid trying to get into a fight before an event happens lends itself to a lot of funny moments. How all these scenarios play into the teen angst in the movie is fun, but they didn't do anything new or interesting for the coming-of-age genre. Some kids who are into manga or anime might like this film, but I didn't care for it much.

Miguel Wants To Fight is a funny take on the coming-of-age genre. The dream sequences and set up for some potential fight added a chuckle or two to my face, but as a whole, the film just didn't do it for me. I'm just not the target audience for a coming-of-age film set around One Punch Man. The cast and direction were fine, but the script wasn’t very good and weighed the film down. It didn't add anything new to this storied genre.

Miguel Wants to Fight streams on Hulu beginning August 16.

Rating: 2.5/5