Turtles All The Way Down by John Green was first introduced to the world in October of 2017. Now, the beloved book has been adapted for the screen. Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced) is trying to live her life as normally as she can which isn’t easy due to her obsessive compulsive disorder. When she reconnects with her old crush Davis (Felix Mallard), she is swept up in the mystery of where his business tycoon father disappeared to.

Like many others, I devoured Green’s novel when it first came out. It’s been some time so I cannot confirm or deny as to how close they stuck to the original material. But I am happy that this one finally got the same treatment that many of his other pieces of work have received.

Merced completely brings Aza to life. The way in which she depicted her difficulties was nothing like I had seen before and I mean that in a good way. We saw the good, the bad and everything in between and I found that to be really refreshing. I truly believe that people who deal with the same disorder felt seen while watching this.

The rest of the cast were perfectly chosen for their roles. I absolutely loved Daisy (Cree), Aza’s best friend. They were there for each other through it all and she brought some much needed comedy to the film. It was nice seeing Mallard in something outside of his usual stint on Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia and Judy Reyes was a spot on choice for Aza’s mom Gina. I also appreciated the inclusion of J. Smith-Cameron as Professor Abbott and Poorna Jagannathan as Aza’s therapist Dr. Singh.

While Turtles All The Way Down did seem to target more of a teenage audience, I am still glad that I watched it. It’s not often we see OCD depicted in this way on screen, so I have to commend the choices that were taken to make it happen.

Rating: ♥️♥️♥️