Parents' Guide to The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

Fans of the novel will be excited to see their favorite characters both as their 1960s teen selves and their middle-aged selves. Both young and older versions, the actors in The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat put in strong and convincing performances. All the drama is here, and while each tragedy sets up some kind of character arc, it all can still be a bit much. Even if most of the tragedies in this story end up being prompts for the main characters to make some kind of change in their lives, there still remain numerous scenes of death, people dying, and people crying over dead loved ones. Other violence, like all the racism, hate crimes, and racially violent language, only adds to the oppressive sense of simply trying to live. But still, at times, it can feel like you're just waiting for the next tragic or traumatic thing to happen.

Rather than seeing all these tragic events happen in real time, they are always either shown in the past (1960s) or represented in a flashback. This shapes the narrative around tragedy, almost as if to suggest that people are defined by how we respond to and deal with it. For some, this structure or blueprint will get formulaic and melodramatic, but there's still a genuine sincerity to everything going on here. The world presented is a happy one, despite all the injustice and racism of the '60s, throughout history, and currently still, that remains. And perhaps that is this film's strongest and most positive suggestion: that no matter how unfair life can be, we must still try to make the best out of ourselves, love our friends and family unequivocally, and commit to life changes when life starts getting you down.