Lemonade Blessing” (2025) revolves around the geeky teenager archetype we have seen plenty of times in American cinema. Think of Jason Schwartzman’s character from “Rushmore,” who falls in love with his teacher and naively believes that she is his soulmate. He is ready to go to any lengths, even if it means standing up against her partner. Anderson has made a career out of following similarly awkward and oftentimes socially reserved young characters who learn to grow out of their insecurities for love. Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg have played different shades of this exact character, whose social awkwardness often defines them.
Coincidentally, the star of “Lemonade Blessing,” Jake Ryan, comes from the Wes Anderson school of acting. After being in Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and “Moonrise Kingdom,” Ryan returns in a similarly zany comedy-drama as John Santucci, a socially inept teenager in constant crisis mode. He is a child of divorce, living with his devout Catholic mother, Mary (Jeanine Serralles), who expects him to find comfort in faith. She doesn’t want him to abandon her beliefs, let alone disregard them. Her faith puts a lot of pressure on this young kid, who seems to have never had a single original thought.
While trying to be the perfect boy for her, John steps into a new chapter of his life. He enters his high school and meets Lilith (Skye Alyssa Friedman), a sharper and rather rebellious teenager who isn’t the kindly figure he aspires to be. She is brash and upfront and doesn’t concern herself with others’ opinions of her. To John, that feels almost like a culture shock. The film makes it clear that he has lived a sheltered life and was rewarded with every comfort he sought in exchange for a blind allegiance to whoever provided for him. In his case, that’s his overprotective and overbearing mother, who doesn’t want him to do anything immoral, and to be eternally afraid of societal expectations.
John’s life seems devoid of any genuine thrill. Yet, he is blissfully unaware of that since he hasn’t been exposed to the world beyond him and his mother. There’s an inherent irony to them being afraid of people they have never even met, seen, or heard of. Regardless, for them, faith isn’t solely an exercise for social acceptance. It’s also a crash correction course based on their past. She hopes he grows up to be a generous and selfless man and believes that a rigid value-based system can provide him with a moral backbone. It keeps his behavior in check, but also painfully detached from how that exact rigidity can affect others.
John seems to have never doubted his faith until he meets Lilith. She seems like everything he isn’t. So, as a pubescent boy with surging desires, he can’t help but fall for her. The film handles this part of his coming-of-age arc as him breaking out of his shell and coming into his own. It presents his self-exploration journey with every bit of cringeworthy awkwardness that most of us feel at this point in our lives. The script takes him to absurd places as he tries to do everything he can to be with her.
Like every classic coming-of-age film, Chris Merola’s film is about the first time a kid feels every romantic cliche they know. It is about John’s sense of liberation as he learns about a world beyond his immediate reality. “Lemonade Blessing” goes through the genre beats of similar dramas but stays limited in those trappings. When it comes to exploring John’s friends’ circle, the film offers nothing strikingly different. It almost feels like a Gen Z version of “Superbad,” but not as memorable or even as cleverly subversive as Emma Seligman’s “Bottoms.”
Unlike that, Merola’s film excels in decoding the stage where John and Lilith go through their moments of revelation. Merola’s direction shines in that stretch of the third act, which feels like the perfect culmination point of everything they have been through. Although the moment of profound realization in their lives, it never shows that as a moment of triumph. Instead of comforting lies, it leaves them with a bittersweet tinge of self-awareness that ties in everything they learn about faith, gender, and upbringing.
Although John is focused as the protagonist, it’s Lilith who steals the spotlight, largely because of Friedman’s mature performance. The screenplay rarely shows Lilith as more than a projection of the manic pixie trope — as a girl who is there to make John feel fulfilled and have a revelatory arc. Yet, Friedman’s sincere performance adds many layers to Lilith’s personality as she exposes the institutions that he holds dear. These institutions often preach freedom but exercise control. Yet, instead of indicting them all, the film observes the people who gravitate toward it or are affected by it. Overall, it becomes a raunchy and oftentimes charming depiction of puberty, but rarely rises above its stylistic inspirations.
