Many coming-of-age movies rightfully center on those usually awkward, sometimes painfully relatable transitions between adolescence and adulthood. But some of the genre's best big-screen examples extend that growing-pains period to a character's 20s and 30s, showing that becoming who you will be doesn't come easy, no matter your age.
"The Worst Person in the World", a 2021 Norwegian stunner by director-writer Joachim Trier that centers on a 30-year-old woman struggling to find her direction in life, falls beautifully in the latter camp — and it's now available to stream for free on Tubi.
The acclaimed modern-day dramedy is just one title among the streaming service's ever-changing lineup, which, thanks to ad support, boasts 20,000 free TV shows and movies from studios including Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate and networks including A&E, Lifetime and Starz. Those few commercial breaks mean that, unlike other platforms like Netflix, Tubi doesn't need to charge you for your next movie marathon.
And speaking of movie marathons, here's why "The Worst Person in the World" should be added to your next watch list ASAP.
What is 'The Worst Person in the World' about?
The third installment of Joachim Trier's "Oslo" trilogy — which also includes 2006's "Reprise" and 2011's "Oslo, August 31st" — "The Worst Person in the World" sees Renate Reinsve in a Cannes Best Actress Award-winning turn as Julie, a medical student on the brink of 30 who's navigating both professional changes (her career path transitions from medicine to psychology and later photography) and personal switch-ups.
Julie has been in a relationship with Aksel Willman (played by Anders Danielsen Lie, the only actor to appear in all three of Trier's "Oslo" dramas), a comic artist 15 years her senior. However, an unexpected encounter with an intriguing barista named Eivind (Herbert Nordrum) at a wedding reception makes her unsure about her future with Aksel.
Told across four years of Julie's life — in a novelistic format of "chapters", with both a prologue and epilogue — "The Worst Person in the World" follows the young woman as she battles indecision both in her heart and her career, often to humorous and heart-shattering effect.
Why you should stream 'The Worst Person in the World' on Tubi
With its sexy meet-cutes and 'shroom-laced fantasies, "The Worst Person in the World" does include many of the exciting bits of self-discovery that tend to occur in your late-20s and early-30s, but it's "a romantic comedy that delightfully subverts the genre's well-worn tropes," according to the critical consensus over on Rotten Tomatoes (where the film boasts an excellent 96% approval rating).
Indeed, the award-winning drama — which earned Oscar nominations for Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay for Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt — has become thought of as a millennial masterpiece precisely because it allows a good deal of wistfulness and woe to permeate Julie's journey to happily-ever-after.
Rather, Reinsve's heroine feels resonantly stuck and dissatisfied at every turn, a generational moodiness that's handled hilariously but also movingly throughout the film. ("You seem to be waiting for something. I don’t know what,” Aksel tells her at one point.)
Publications including Vanity Fair and The Atlantic declared "The Worst Person in the World" the best film of 2021, and we'd be hard-pressed to disagree. It's an achingly exquisite watch, at turns devastatingly funny and just plain devastating. Julie might think she deserves the harshness of the film's title, but Trier's instant-classic treats her messy struggles to find her place in the world with something that looks a lot like grace.
Watch "The Worst Person in the World" on Tubi now
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