When You Finish Saving The World Review: Jesse Eisenberg's Directorial Debut Is An Intentional Cringefest [Sundance 2022]

The time-honored tradition of actors making their directorial debuts at film festivals continues with "When You Finish Saving the World," a muddled indie dramedy from actor turned writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, based on his 2020 audio drama of the same name. It's hard not to see Eisenberg's personality — or rather, his public persona, of a fast-talking, intelligent, somewhat awkward guy — layered throughout the film, with star Finn Wolfhard doing a kind of Eisenberg cosplay the same way every male lead of a Woody Allen movie that isn't Woody Allen is just doing a weird Woody Allen impersonation. Like many actors-turned-filmmakers, Eisenberg takes what he's learned from working with other directors (like, say, Noah Baumbach) and tries to mold it in his own image. The results aren't entirely bad, but they don't quite hit the mark, either. I do think Eisenberg has something in the directing department, and I hope he can grow into a better filmmaker. For now, though, "When You Finish Saving the World" feels like the type of movie made strictly for film festival audiences. A24 has already picked up the movie, but I don't expect the usual A24 fanfare to surround this thing. It will likely slip away, forgotten, and Eisenberg will hopefully spring back with something stronger.

Following a group of characters caught in their own little liberal bubble, the type that thinks a pithy Tweet is all you need to make a real statement, "When You Finish Saving the World" is ultimately the story of a mother and son. Ziggy (Wolfhard) has what he considers a big following online, where he runs a YouTube channel full of videos in which he sits in his bedroom playing rather bad songs. Despite his claims of fame, Ziggy is clearly insecure with himself. He would love to impress Lila (Alisha Boe), a girl in his school committed to social change and activism. As far as Ziggy is concerned, he cares about that stuff too — although it becomes clear that he doesn't actually have a grasp on the issues. He simply parrots things other people are saying while uttering lines of dialogue like, "I thought what you were talking about at lunch was lit!"

Ziggy's mother Evelyn (Julianne Moore, who seems a little lost with this material) runs a shelter for domestic abuse victims, and as far as she's concerned, she's a person of action while Ziggy is all talk. She raised Ziggy to care about Important issues with a capital I, but now she tells her son: "You stopped being interested in anything outside your own little world." In her eyes, Ziggy doesn't want to do the work of learning about important social matters — he just wants to mimic talking points for popularity. And she's not wrong there. But that's not to say Evelyn is on the right path, either. As much as she fancies herself as someone who fights for noble causes, she also appears to be lost in her own little world, too. When a tearful shelter resident comes into her office one day and asks for a hug, claiming Evelyn helped save her life, Evelyn looks downright annoyed, as if she has far more important things to do than offer comfort to someone.