Mile End Kicks Review (2026)

Mile End Kicks is all about messy choices, fleeting relationships, and the slow, often invisible process of figuring yourself out, one imperfect decision at a time.

Apr 21, 2026

I am sure we have all had that feeling where you should probably have things figured out by now, at some part of our life - Mile End Kicks is all about that and getting to the destination via everything that comes in between.

Plot

A 24-year-old music critic gets romantically involved with members of an indie band she decides to publicize, set against Montreal’s indie music scene in 2011.

Good Points

Barbie Ferreira is excellent
An honest, unpolished look at early adult life
Dry humour that works well
Avoids over-dramatising or romanticising struggle

Bad Points

Predictable structure and some familiar beats
Doesn’t dig as deep into its themes as it could
Lacks a strong narrative drive

It leans into the mess instead of fixing it

Mile End Kicks is very comfortable with things not working, as there’s no rush to clean anything up, and no sudden clarity where the main character figures everything out and moves forward with purpose, it just lets her exist in that in-between space - half-confident, half-lost, making decisions that feel right in the moment and questionable five minutes later.

Now, a lot of films about this stage of life either lean too hard into mayhem and chaos, or try to force a sense of growth that doesn’t feel earned, but this sits somewhere in the middle, where it actually acknowledges the mess without trying to package it into something neat, which was good to see.

Bad decisions feel small - but they add up

On the surface, everything feels quite low-stakes here, where it’s all about the smaller problems - bad choices, awkward conversations, relationships that clearly aren’t going anywhere but still somehow continue.

It captures that phase where nothing feels like a huge mistake in isolation, but over time, you start to realise you’ve been drifting, and there’s a quiet weight to that, even when the film keeps things relatively light.

There’s definitely a version of this story that turns everything into a kind of charming chaos - struggling artist, messy life, but where it all looks fun and slightly aspirational.

There’s still some charm in the setting though, but it’s all undercut by laziness, distraction, and a general lack of direction, so it doesn’t pretend that just existing in that space is enough.

And that balance works.

The relationships feel painfully familiar

This is where the film will hit a lot of people the hardest, I think.

The people that the main character surrounds herself with aren’t exaggerated, they’re just not great choices, something a lot of people will relate to - the kind of people who seem interesting at first, then slowly reveal why they’re probably not worth the time.

And the film knows exactly how those dynamics play out, as you can see the patterns early on, and you know where certain interactions are heading - it’s the kind of thing where you’re watching and thinking, yeah, this is going to go badly, and it does.

No one is actually outright awful either, as they’re just selfish, inconsistent, or stuck in their own version of thing, and we have all seen these people before, but the film doesn’t judge them too harshly either.

There’s a gap between who she is and who she thinks she is

This is probably the most interesting layer running through it all.

The main character talks about wanting independence, meaning, something real. But her actions don’t always line up with that, as she keeps circling back to the same kinds of situations, the same types of people, and the film doesn’t spell that out.

It just lets the contradiction sit there, so that disconnect - between intention and behaviour -is something a lot of films either ignore or over-explain, bu here, it’s just part of the character.

It’s quite familiar

There’s no getting around it though, as this kind of story has been done before, a lot - you can see the structure, you can predict certain turns, and it doesn’t really try to reinvent anything on a narrative level, but it makes up for that in some of the details, and I did feel like it held back at times.

There are ideas here about identity, ambition, and self-worth that don’t get fully explored, and while the film touches on them, and hints at something deeper, it just then moves on before it really digs in, and I wanted it to go a bit harder on those themes.

Final Verdict

I wasn’t blown away by Mile End Kicks, but I am glad I watched it, and while I don’t think it pushes certain things far enough, it does have a certain charm to it that I think younger people will relate to a bit more.

Maybe I am just a bit too old thesedays.