Turtles All the Way Down: Germs and Infinite Regress Getting in the Way of Teen Love

MOVIE INFO:

Turtles All the Way Down tackles anxiety through its 17-year-old protagonist, Aza Holmes. It’s not easy being Aza, but she’s trying… trying to be a good daughter, a good friend, and a good student, all while navigating an endless barrage of invasive, obsessive thoughts that she cannot control. When she reconnects with Davis, her childhood crush, Aza is confronted with fundamental questions about her potential for love, happiness, friendship, and hope.

REVIEW:

Turtles All the Way Down, the Max movie based on the best-selling John Green novel, takes its title from the infinite regress theory, particularly the anecdote attributed to William James, but in the movie uttered by a renown college professor and substitute life coach, Professor Abbot, played by J. Smith-Cameron. The story goes: An older woman at a science lecture posits that the Earth rests on the shell of a tortoise, which in turn sits on the back of a larger tortoise, and so on, to infinity. Turtles all the way down.

For Aza (Isabel Merced), a teen living with OCD, particularly germaphobia, replace bacteria for turtles, and you get a sense of how far her fears go. Aza’s contamination anxieties are hurting her in both the social and love area. Her son of a missing billionaire crush, Davis (Felix Mallard) is being left stranded and confused by her unspoken phobias of disease and death that may come with even a casual brushing of his lips to her’s. Therapy is not working and her understanding long time bf, Daisy (Cree) is starting to lose patience for her continual disease self absorption that causes Aza to neglect her.

Aza’s internal conflicts create most of the action in Turtles All the Way Down. Daisy is perfect and understanding and forgiving. Cree has perfected the art of the genuine smile, which tends to do her more serious acting. Davis, is the perfect friend, potential boyfriend. He’s everything Daisy is but with better looks, charms and unlimited money. To top off this perfection is his kindness and willingness to take over parental duties for his very younger brother. He’s the anodyne romantic character that makes girls swoon, and the boys forced to stream this on a slow night, gag.

Only Aza seems fully formed. Davis is basically a statue in motion. Daisy is just the usual sidekick role- exhibiting pluck without complexity. The ending rings hollow when it tries to spin everything as a friendship love story, not Aza overcoming her anxieties. That’s reserved for a flaccid fantasy sequence. It’s odd that this germaphobe would even submit to any type of group hug.

Hannah Marks, the director, does manage to give Turtles texture with her stylish florishes. She’ll pair Aza’s anxieties with visuals of bacteria splitting and infecting. Add a constant inner monologue over those visuals during moments of high stress and the movie has convincingly delineated her disability.

It’s interesting how the germaphobia is incorporated into the enigmas of seeking one’s true identity that is the central theme of teen dramas. Aza wonders if her personhood is really a Russian Doll with hollowness at its core. Is her OCD an essential part of who she is or just holding her back from discovering it? The movie never grants her a solution or even an easy trauma for its cause. At least, it’s very real there.