Movie review
April 27, 2024 · 111 min · PG-13
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
A 2024 romantic drama follows 16-year-old Aza Holmes as she battles severe OCD with intrusive contamination thoughts and spirals while reconnecting with a childhood crush and investigating a local billionaire's disappearance alongside her best friend. The film centers on personal mental health struggles, friendship, and tentative romance through creative visualization of internal thought processes. No identity-driven themes, activist dialogue, political messaging, or institutional critiques appear in the narrative, marketing, or reception.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Turtles All the Way Down.
Woke representation / casting
Latina actresses lead central family and friendship roles in a plausible modern American setting without narrative emphasis on ethnicity, identity signaling, or any mismatch with the personal-focused premise.
Woke political dialogue
No political, activist, or ideological dialogue exists; all speech stays grounded in personal anxiety, friendships, and everyday concerns.
Identity-driven story themes
Narrative engine is the protagonist's individual OCD battle and its effects on relationships; zero identity politics, group messaging, or social justice elements.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Peripheral missing-billionaire subplot adds faint class contrast as a mystery device but contains no recurring modern activist critique of capitalism, patriarchy, institutions, or cultural norms.
Woke character or canon changes
Protagonist cast as Latina from the book's minimal physical description; executed without thematic reframing or public ideological debate.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
No backlash or complaints framing the film as pushing woke, identity-political, or left-wing content; all coverage avoids such angles entirely.
Creator track record context
John Green brings personal OCD advocacy and progressive-leaning YA history; screenwriters have inclusive credits; director focuses on intimate stories—yet this project is explicitly framed around autobiographical mental health accuracy, not activism.
Production
