Soleil Moon Frye carried her video camera everywhere she went when she was a teenager in the 90s. From wild parties to mundane trips to the mall. Then she locked those videotapes away and never looked back. Twenty-something years later, she has opened her vault of recorded memories and made the documentary kid90.
Frye rose to fame as a child on the 80s sitcom Punky Brewster. Everyone loved the character and the precocious little girl who played her. When the show ended, she continued to work in the business while having a semi-normal teen life. By this time, she had befriended other young actors like Brian Austin Green, Stephen Dorff, and Mark-Paul Gosselaar. They grew up together in LA and she was there to film it all.
In kid90, Frye looks back at this footage and checks in with her younger self. She questions whether or not what she remembers happening actually occurred. She finds that she did have a pretty happy childhood. Her family was loving and caring. Plus, she had a supportive group of friends. There were dark times though. Frye’s breasts developed very early, leading to unwanted attention and harassment from older men. In the documentary, we see her going in for breast reduction surgery. She also had to contend with sexual assault. These events shaped her physically and emotionally.
The film also gets into life as a child star. Frye’s post-Punky career didn’t take off in the way she would have hoped, but she accepted this and moved past it. Unfortunately, many of her friends weren’t able to survive similar challenges. Actor Jonathan Brandis, who also became famous at a young age, is featured in the film. He seems happy and Frye only has fond memories of him. This is where perceptions of the past can differ from what was actually going on. Frye wasn’t seeing the whole picture. After his career failed, Brandis killed himself. Frye wonders how she could have missed the pain her friend was going through. Not everything showed up on camera it seems.
In the 90s, social media didn’t exist and people weren’t self-documenting like they do today. Frye was ahead of the curve. She knew she had a story to share someday. Also, without the threat of having their personal business put online, she was able to capture her friends unguarded. As a fellow 90s kid, it’s interesting to see these actors that I followed in a more private real setting. Frye does a great job of assembling it all and taking the audience down a fun and sometimes complex nostalgia trip.
NostalGeoff 