Sundance 2022: When You Finish Saving The World Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Sundance Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

When it comes to certain films, there are those imbued with the personality of their director. When You Finish Saving The World, the feature writing and directorial debut of Jesse Eisenberg, is certainly an example of that. While not a perfect film by any means, showing inexperience at times, the vision is definitely there even if it’s not fully realized. Working more often than not, the film still won’t be for everyone but its pair of lead performances from Finn Wolfhard and Julianne Moore still give it life. In the end, what truly held the film back was its lack of depth which prevented it from making anything more out of its premise, relegating the film to a mostly surface level character study. That being said, the film delivers a decent watch over its sub 90 minute running time.

As mentioned, When You Finish Saving The World focuses on the relationship of a high school student and online musician named Ziggy (Wolfhard) and his mother Evelyn (Moore) who ran a shelter for domestic abuse survivors. The two could not be any more different. Believing their current passions to be noble, their growing generational divide put a wall between them where they could no longer relate to one another. The story saw them take that awkward energy as Ziggy attempted to impress a social activist classmate named Lila (Boe) as Evelyn desperately tried to fill the void from her lack of a relationship with her own son by taking a teen named Kyle (Billy Bryk) under her wing. Though the film failed to assign any deeper meaning to those journeys, they were still somewhat compelling to watch.

At the end of the day, the best part of When You Finish Saving The World was the performances of Wolfhard and Moore as Ziggy and Evelyn. Despite being barely more than one-dimensional, they brought life to what was an endearing mother-son dynamic. The script and direction, most likely due to inexperience, barely did anything with them as their flawed and awkward nature will surely make it hard for audiences to connect with but they did the best with what they had. In spite of that, the film still had its fair share of wholesome moments that will only work with that connection.

A decent first attempt from Eisenberg.

*still courtesy of A24

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.