Yes, God, Yes

This well-written and performed sex-themed coming-of-age comedy is funny and amusingly quaint considering how much more open teens are 20 years after the movie's post-Y2K era. Despite being 25, Dyer is still youthful enough to believably play an older teen whose experiences with sex are mostly through pop culture (the Titanic car scene!) rather than real life. Alice is both amusingly naive and curious. She doesn't want to be labeled or judged, but she's undeniably interested in sex and arousal -- within the safe confines of a hot classmate. Writer-director Karen Maine -- who based the film partially on her own experiences -- depicts Alice's struggles as a commentary on the Catholic church's focus on abstinence until marriage, as well as the general sexism involved in high school sexual politics (Alice is shamed for purportedly doing something amoral and "vixenish" with a guy at a party).

Yes, God, Yes is set around the year 2000, with Titanic obsession, one classmate's love of Blink 182's 1999 album Enema of the State, and the old-fashioned technology (desktops, dial-ups, and AOL Instant Messenger) serving as the main clues to the timeline. Alice also mentions Oakley sunglasses, uses a flip phone, and references a few other popular-at-the-time items, but this isn't a movie that's steeped in nostalgia like Dyer's most famous project, Stranger Things. Maine's comedy is about sex, school, sexism, religion, and figuring out that sometimes well-meaning adults and friendly classmates are actually judgmental hypocrites. There's a lot to unpack, all of it unfavorable to the church and the patriarchy, and, while witty, the movie also seems almost safe by Gen Z standards. Many of today's high schoolers are more progressive and understanding regarding everything from gender identity and expression to sexual orientation to women's rights, so it's unclear who the ideal audience is for Yes, God, Yes. Still, it's entertaining and well executed enough that Maine should continue to chronicle adolescence and young adulthood.