When I was 22, I was a music critic for an alternative weekly newspaper, and I recognized my own past experience from the first moments of “Mile End Kicks,” when 22-year-old alt-weekly music critic Grace Pine (Barbie Ferreira) is at a concert, writing on her little notepad, and a pair of strangers ask her what she’s doing. I, too, have experienced the self-satisfaction of telling random people that you’re reviewing a concert, feeling a tiny bit of importance and admiration from others while scribbling down a set list.
I’m not Canadian, and my time as a music critic in my early 20s came about a decade before Grace’s in “Mile End Kicks,” which is set mostly in Montreal in 2011. I’m also not a woman, so I never experienced the pervasive sexism that Grace has to deal with as a female writer in a male-dominated field. But the way that writer-director Chandler Levack personalizes her story is what makes “Mile End Kicks” so effective.
It’s a distinctive, honest coming-of-age romantic comedy that feels genuine regardless of whether or not you can directly relate to the protagonist. It’s one of my favorite movies of the year so far, and it deserves to find a bigger audience now that it’s on Netflix, alongside Levack’s other 2026 release, the Netflix original teen comedy “Roommates.”
‘Mile End Kicks’ captures the vibe of a specific music scene
Grace doesn’t stay at her alt-weekly job for long after the movie begins. Instead, after a year of working in Toronto, she decides to move to Montreal, home of a burgeoning indie rock scene that includes acts like Arcade Fire and Mac DeMarco. Although she’s excited by the prospect of immersing herself in this scene, Grace’s main goal is to write an entry in the influential “33 1/3” series of books about major albums, covering Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill.”
Grace is clearly talented, and she’s clearly a hard worker, having churned out 400 articles in a single year in her alt-weekly job. But she’s easily distracted by the temptations of living in the hipster haven of Montreal, where she moves in with fashionable DJ Madeleine (Juliette Gariépy). Madeleine’s boyfriend Hugo (Robert Naylor) is the drummer in indie-rock band Bone Patrol, which soon becomes Grace’s new obsession, especially as she crushes hard on lead singer Chevy (Stanley Simons).
Bone Patrol’s music is believably mediocre, sounding exactly like a midlevel indie-rock band that might get some regional press but never breaks through nationally. Grace is smitten anyway, and in classic rom-com fashion, she doesn’t see that Chevy — whom Madeleine calls “the worst guy in Montreal” — is a complete douchebag, and that sensitive and funny Bone Patrol guitarist Archie (Devon Bostick) is obviously the guy for her.
‘Mile End Kicks’ showcases relatable personal and professional struggles
It may take a little too long for Grace to realize how terrible Chevy is, but that’s because she’s still figuring out pretty much everything about her life. The protagonist of Levack’s 2022 debut feature, “I Like Movies,” was so obliviously self-centered that it made him hard to endure at times, and there are moments when “Mile End Kicks” could be “I Like Music.” But Grace is a more nuanced, self-aware character, and she’s not hard to root for even when she makes serious mistakes.
A lot of that comes down to Ferreira’s excellent performance, showing so much of Grace’s emotional turmoil and aspirations just in her facial expressions. It’s easy to see how blinded she is by Chevy’s artsy aloofness and disheveled handsomeness, and how overwhelmed she can be by the challenges of taking her career to the next level.
“I think that writing is hard and no one should do it,” she says to Archie when he asks how her book is going, and that hyperbole certainly speaks to me in my moments of deadline pressure. Grace’s cheery self-deprecation never comes off as whiny, though.
Part of what makes “Mile End Kicks” satisfying is witnessing Grace’s journey toward confidence in her abilities and finding her voice as a writer. “I just feel like society hates it when women talk about themselves,” she tells her book editor. She’s referring to Alanis Morissette in that moment, but the same sentiment applies to her own life, and even while she fumbles in her attempt to write about Alanis, she finds a way to follow her idol’s creative lead.
“Mile End Kicks” follows in the tradition of music journalist movies like Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” and 2019’s underrated Beanie Feldstein comedy “How to Build a Girl,” but Levack brings personal and cultural specificity to every familiar development. Like Grace, “Mile End Kicks” is funny, smart and endearingly messy. I may be able to relate to Grace, but even in my 20s, I was never as cool as this.
Stream “Mile End Kicks” on Netflix now
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