Spud 3: Learning to Fly

Spud 3: Learning to Fly (2014) is a South African coming-of-age comedy you can watch online on iFILM, the third film adapted from John van de Ruit's Spud novels. John Cleese returns as the eccentric housemaster, with Troye Sivan in the title role.

It's 1992, and South Africa is approaching its first free elections. Spud Milton returns to boarding school as a senior expecting a quiet final year. He does not get one. His old enemy is back, a garrulous Malawian has moved into the dormitory, and a deeply unpleasant discovery involving his grandmother has made fried fish permanently off the table. The country is changing underneath him; Spud is mostly trying to survive Shakespeare and his own late adolescence.

Warmer than the first two films and laced with the bittersweet feeling of a year that's actually ending, Spud 3 works even without the earlier context. Troye Sivan — before music made him famous — carries it with real ease. Stream Spud 3: Learning to Fly online on iFILM.