As Cool as I Am

As Cool as I Am (2013) is a coming-of-age dramedy you can watch online on iFILM, built around a sixteen-year-old who has grown up faster than the people raising her. Sarah Bolger stars opposite Claire Danes, James Marsden and Thomas Mann.

Lucy runs the house in a small American town. Her father spends months away on jobs in Canada, her mother behaves like the teenager in the family, and so the cooking, the bills and the worrying all fall to a girl who is still figuring herself out. While she holds everything together, her own life starts moving: a first real pull toward her childhood friend Kenny, and the slow realization that her parents' marriage is cracking for reasons that have nothing to do with distance.

Max Mayer directs from Pete Fromm's novel, and he keeps it quiet and a little rueful rather than sentimental. Bolger plays smart instead of weepy, and Danes makes the mother human instead of merely guilty. Stream As Cool as I Am (2013) online on iFILM.