Critics reviews

The film is funny and sweet, easy to like and lovely to look at. It has been described as a movie where "nothing much happens," though, and it could be seen as overvaluing its own gentleness. Beneath the easy-going surface, however, Only the Young is as formally accomplished as any of the seemingly more ambitious documentaries of the past few years. If one uncovers its distinct rhythms, a vital work of cinematic nonfiction emerges.

What the film is left with is the frequently hilarious antics and conversations among the three teens, who have nothing better to do than hang out, granting the filmmakers and the viewers the privilege of their excellent company.

We're not just seeing common milestones of adolescence—first relationship, first car, graduation—but something more intangible: the gradual sea change of young adulthood, a time when priorities imperceptibly shift and friendships begin to quietly dissolve. Self-conscious but candid, the teens themselves are the whole show; watching them grapple with the big, complicated feelings of waning youth is never less than affecting.

With aching, precious, dead-on accuracy, Tippet and Mims capture the elusive, shimmering, versatile quality of life that "only the young" have – when everything is possible and everything difficult, when you have dreams you dare not articulate, when you build secret hideouts in abandoned houses, take your dates to derelict romantic spaces, skate in empty swimming pools, are on the verge of something bigger than you, but think you'll be young forever.