C'mon C'mon

There’s a specific kind of visual silence that only happens in black and white. It’s a trick of the light that signals to your brain: Hey, stop looking for the brightest color in the room and actually listen for a second. When I first put on Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon, I was halfway through a bowl of Cheerios that had gone depressingly soggy because I was too busy staring at the screen to actually pick up my spoon. I didn’t expect a movie about a middle-aged guy recording interviews with teenagers to be the thing that finally made me put my phone in the other room, but here we are.

Released in the tail end of 2021, C’mon C’mon arrived at a weird moment for all of us. We were just starting to emerge from our various lockdowns, blinking into the sun, and trying to remember how to be human beings around other human beings. It’s probably why this movie—a gentle, monochrome "road trip" film—didn't exactly set the box office on fire. It earned about $4.3 million against an $8 million budget, which in the world of A24 is practically a rounding error compared to something like Everything Everywhere All At Once. It’s a movie that slipped through the cracks of the streaming-era saturation, but it’s precisely the kind of film that feels like a warm blanket for anyone currently suffering from "everything-everywhere-all-the-time" fatigue.

The Art of the Un-Phoenix Performance

We’ve spent the last decade watching Joaquin Phoenix do "Extreme Acting." Whether he’s losing weight to play a cackling clown or brooding his way through a gritty thriller like You Were Never Really Here, he’s become the patron saint of the high-intensity transformation. That’s why his turn as Johnny is such a shock to the system. He plays a radio journalist who is—get this—a totally normal, slightly lonely, deeply kind guy. There are no prosthetics, no histrionics, and no explosive monologues.

The plot is deceptively simple: Johnny ends up taking care of his young nephew, Jesse, while his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) deals with a mental health crisis involving her husband (Scoot McNairy). Johnny and Jesse embark on a trip across the U.S. for Johnny’s work, interviewing real-life kids about their fears and hopes for the future. Joaquin Phoenix spends most of the movie holding a giant boom mic, looking like a man who has forgotten how to take care of himself but is suddenly, terrifyingly responsible for a small human who refuses to stop asking questions.

Gaby Hoffmann is the secret MVP here. Even though she’s mostly on the other end of a phone line, her chemistry with Phoenix feels lived-in and raw. She captures that specific brand of sibling exhaustion—the kind where you love someone to death but also want to remind them of that one thing they did in 1997 that still annoys you.

A Child Actor Who Doesn't Feel Like a "Child Actor"

Usually, when a movie pairs a grizzled adult with a precocious kid, I prepare myself for a cringe-fest. But Woody Norman, who plays Jesse, is a revelation. He’s a British kid playing American, and his performance is so natural it’s almost scary. He doesn’t hit "cute" marks; he hits "annoying, brilliant, weird, and vulnerable" marks. He captures the way kids process trauma through play—like his habit of pretending to be an orphan while his uncle is right there.

The magic of the film is in the sound. Because Johnny is a radio producer, we spend a lot of time listening to the textures of the world: the waves in Venice Beach, the traffic in New York, the jazz in New Orleans. Director Mike Mills and cinematographer Robbie Ryan (who did the wildly different The Favourite) use the black-and-white palette to strip away the distractions of the modern world. In an era where every blockbuster looks like a fluorescent CGI fever dream, C’mon C’mon is a visual palate cleanser. It’s essentially a high-end therapy session that costs way less than an actual co-pay.

Why It Disappeared (And Why You Should Find It)

So, why haven't you heard more about this? It’s a "quiet" film in a "loud" industry. It was released during the Omicron wave when people weren't exactly rushing to theaters to see a B&W drama about feelings. It also lacks a "hook" in the social media sense; you can’t really make a 15-second TikTok trend out of a man and a boy talking about the ecological future of the planet.

However, the "interviews" in the film aren't scripted. Mike Mills actually sent the crew out to interview real kids in various cities, and their answers—ranging from fears about climate change to simple hopes for a better life—ground the movie in our current cultural moment. It’s a time capsule of the late 2010s/early 2020s anxiety, but it handles it with such grace that it never feels like it's lecturing you.

If you’re feeling a bit battered by the state of the world, or if you just want to see Joaquin Phoenix give a performance that feels like a hug instead of a panic attack, track this one down. It’s currently tucked away on various streaming platforms, waiting to be rediscovered by someone who has five minutes to kill but ends up staying for the whole two hours.

Ultimately, C’mon C'mon is a movie about the effort it takes to truly hear someone else. It acknowledges that the world is often a scary, overwhelming place, but suggests that the only way through is to keep recording, keep listening, and keep moving. It’s a small film with a massive heart, and it deserves to be more than just a footnote in A24’s catalog. Put your phone away, ignore the soggy cereal, and just listen.