‘Everything to Me’ is sure to be Apple of your eye
There are times when Kayci Lacob’s semi-autobiographical “Everything to Me” feels like a strung-together assortment of ads for Apple products, from the iMac to the iPod and iPhone. But then you realize how consequential these inventions were to millennials like Lacob, whose youth perfectly aligned with the growth of Apple and its cultish co-founder, Steve Jobs. More so, if, like Lacob, you were raised in the shadow of Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters.
So, why should the rest of us care? That was what I pondered throughout the opening moments when we’re introduced to Lacob’s precocious alter-ego, Claudia, the daughter of two tech engineers, one of whom ceded the world of bits and bytes for babes. It’s in the throes of this high-tech high that Claudia (played as a child by Eliza Donaghy and as a teenager by her older sister, Abigail) commences her unhealthy hero worship of Jobs.
Yes, her idol all but abandoned his first child, Lisa, but Claudia seems to ignore that fact. Which is ironic considering Claudia loathes her own techie dad (“Mad Men’s” Rich Sommers), whom she believes unceremoniously ditched her and her cancer-stricken mother (Judy Greer) by running off with a much younger woman.
This is about the time it dawns on you that “Everything to Me” isn’t your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age tale. Lacob broadens the scope of Claudia’s blind-to-the-facts journey to encompass a critique of an entire generation transfixed by the allure of Jobs’s legacy, one that includes iTunes, iPods, iPhones, and his co-ownership of Pixar – in its halcyon, pre-Disney days. Ah, but Lacob doesn’t stop there. She adds yet another layer by using Claudia to personify the unrealistic pressure many millennials place on themselves to be exceptional – to be like Steve, much like small-fry basketball aficionados wanted to be like Mike.
With few exceptions, Lacob succeeds beyond expectations, crafting a film that’s as smart as it is involving. There’s real emotion here, despite Claudia’s pervasive, unwavering stoicism. While her peers are out partying and enjoying teenage life, she’s got her nose buried in textbooks, at least when she’s not experimenting with typing code. It’s the very definition of obsession.
It’s never implied, but to me, Claudia is as firmly situated on the autism spectrum as I: the fixation on one particular subject; the absence of friends beyond her BFF, Lucy (Ella Gibson as a girl, Lola Flanery as a teen); and her inability to recognize social cues, like telling her favorite teacher, Mr. Shine (a fabulous Utkarsh Ambudkar), that he’s a classic underachiever.
The Donaghys, particularly Abigail, convincingly convey Claudia’s rigidity without rendering her an emotionless drone. Even when Claudia is treating her father abhorrently, it’s owing to disappointment and not a lack of love. Still, there are occasions when you grow so exasperated with Claudia that you just want to shake her and say, “Snap out of it.” And that’s exactly where Lacob wants us in her assessment of young people who unwittingly forfeit their childhoods when they fail to strike a reciprocal balance between work and play.
There are times when Lacob goes overboard with the tenacity, like when Claudia practically forces herself on her freaked-out prom date (Gavin Lewis). But those instances are rare. And they do nothing to diminish the impact of scenes that flirt with perfection, like the night Mom tells Claudia she’s been diagnosed with cancer, or the day when Claudia gets her first period and, with no alternative, is forced to navigate the intricacies of inserting a tampon, with a reluctant assist from Lucy.
Those standout examples are representative of Lacob’s knack for seamlessly shifting between humor and pathos. She’s just as adept at establishing a strong sense of time and place, using news coverage of world events, such as 9/11, the killing of bin Laden and, natch, Jobs’s untimely death at 56 in 2011. You’d also never suspect that most of the movie was shot in an Indian community in Oklahoma rather than Silicon Valley.
Overall, it’s an impressive rookie effort by Lacob, who captures a key moment in millennial history and presents it in a thoroughly entertaining fashion. Heck, I bet even an enigmatic genius like Jobs, the titular “everything,” would approve of Lacob’s double-edged ode to his messianic feat of molding humans into flesh-and-blood machines.
Movie review
Everything to Me
Rated: Not rated
Cast: Abigail Donaghy, Eliza Donaghy, Judy Greer, Rich Sommer, Victoria Pedretti, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Ella Gibson and Lola Flanery
Director: Kayci Lacob
Writer: Kayci Lacob
Runtime: 89 minutes
Where: In theaters Sept. 5 (limited)
Grade: B
