I'm glad she realized even as a teenage that a painful six hour surgery would result in letting her be who she wanted to be. I love that she documented so much of her life. Despite this, I love that she has so many videos and pictures that would not be out of place with a current day celebrity. We could read blurbs from the canned interviews about their favorite colors and how many pets they had but we didn't get to know them the way that you can today with social media, so this was like pulling back the curtain on so many people I grew up watching. In the pre-internet days, all we knew about these teen stars came from the carefully selected sound bytes released by their PR people to shitty publications like Teen Beat and People. I enjoyed hearing what all of these actors had to say about each other, about the industry, about their friendships, etc. But Frye’s wide web of contacts offers a compelling window into not only her past, but the very specific cultural moment when it all unfolded.This covered such a wide range of topics: growing up in the 90s, Hollywood (which covers another huge subset of topics), what it's like to be a teenager, reminiscing with your childhood friends about the old days, girls being sexualized, etc. The destination, frankly, is probably less compelling than the journey. Directed by Frye – who’s starring in a “Punky” revival on the streaming service Peacock – the documentary gives off the feel of wading through old yearbooks, while allowing the viewers to peer over Frye’s shoulder as she tries to sort out what it all meant. There are plenty of memorable tidbits sprinkled throughout “Kid 90,” from Frye videotaping herself going for breast-reduction surgery as a teenager (after her rapid development made her the butt of cruel jokes) to video of her partying with pals – drinking Jagermeister straight from the bottle – quickly followed by footage of her delivering a pitch to “Just Say No” to drugs.įrye also opens up about a date-rape incident – before that term existed – and her later relationship with Charlie Sheen, who insists on referring to himself as “Charles” in the voicemail messages that she saved.įor anyone who watched some of these shows in their heyday, “Kid 90” is like prying open a time capsule, filled with at least as many melancholy memories as joyful ones. While Frye talks about having a reasonably normal childhood all things considered, Gosselaar recalls being told that once an actor walked onto a TV or movie set, kid or no kid, “You have to act like an adult.” Most remarkably, Frye toted a video camera around before cellphones were ubiquitous, which makes this behind-the-velvet-ropes access all the more intoxicating. The list includes Stephen Dorff, Brian Austin Green, David Arquette, Balthazar Getty, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and more. As proof, the film ends with sobering snapshots of all the friends that Frye, now 44, lost along the way.Ĭast in her NBC sitcom at age seven, Frye cites her own questions as to whether “things really happened the way I remembered them” as motivation for the project, enlisting other former kid actors – one wants to call them survivors – to share their recollections. Premiering on Hulu, the 70-some-odd-minute film really plays like a companion to another recent documentary, Alex Winter’s HBO film “Showbiz Kids,” presenting a nostalgic but troubling vision of what it was like to be a child star. Turns out Soleil Moon Frye – TV’s “Punky Brewster” – meticulously documented her formative years, recently wading back through home movies, phone messages and photos and assembling them into “Kid 90,” a documentary that she calls “A true chronological blueprint of what it was to grow up as a teenager in the ’90s.” But Frye was a special teen – one with Zelig-like exposure to practically everyone else who was young and famous during those years.
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