Miguel Wants to Fight Review
Streaming Movie Review - Hulu
I don’t remember what sparked the conversation. Probably some fight in the hallway at school, but I do remember all of my friends recounting the times they had been in a fight. All of them had taken or thrown a punch at some point, but I was the one person in our friend group who never had. I grew up with two sisters and while we fought, it never came to fisticuffs. More than 30 years after that conversation it remains the case that I have never been in a physical alteration. So I was more than a little bit curious about Oz Rodriguez’s new movie “Miguel Wants to Fight,” currently streaming on Hulu.
Miguel (Tyler Dean Flores) has never been in a fight. His friends Srini (Suraj Partha), Cass (Imani Lewis), and David (Christian Vunipola) tell him that tagging in to help your friends fight is part of the friend code. When Miguel’s parents tell him that they’re moving, he decides that he needs to get into a fight to prove to his friends that he has their back. But as he tries to find the perfect opponent to prove he’s a good friend, will he end up squandering the time he has with the people he wants to impress?
This movie surprised me. It is a quick film at just 75 minutes, but it manages to pack quite a bit of humor into that run time. I’m always a little bit wary of movies that use a lot of gimmicks, but this one used them effectively. Miguel is a movie buff, so whenever he is envisioning the fights he hopes to get into, they are all in a different movie style, which is fun and engaging. They also announce each of his planned fights with a boxing poster kind of graphic that is entertaining as well. So the style of this movie was highly enjoyable.
The cast is really wonderful as well, particularly the four main characters. They have great chemistry together and the way that they brought their own character quirks to life was lovely. There weren’t any exceptional performances that absolutely wowed me, but it was lovely to see a diverse group of kids on screen and watch them interact so naturally.
Because the movie is so short, the story is a little bit shallow. It kind of reminded me of “The Art of Self-Defense,” but for teens and with a bit more humor. That said, I wish it had either left out some of the issues Miguel had with his father or fleshed them out. As it was, it felt too thin to have much emotional impact.
Overall, this is a pretty easy recommendation for me. It’s a great story of friendship and being true to yourself. And in a teen comedy, those are good stories to tell, even if you have to get punched in the face to learn them.
This movie originally appeared in The Dominion Post on August 26, 2023.