Publication Date: 12-15-2025

Flipped (2010) review

Dir. Rob Reiner

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★★

Remembering Rob Reiner

1947 – 2025

Flipped is a coming-of-age film directed by the coming-of-age master director Rob Reiner. Reiner directed the tear-jerker Stand By Me and is now back to bring Wendelin Van Draanen’s novel of the same name to life. Talk about a treat.

What came to mind halfway through the film was why couldn’t the movie Speak have been this good? This film proves more than 80% can be done by narration from two characters’ different perspective and it can be done well. Why not do the same for Speak? Most of the dialog in this film is internal and not directly word of mouth and it works. Why not treat Speak the same way? Were they afraid they would mess it up? It begs an explanation to why Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel’s potential on film was unfaithful to it’s film companion.

Contrary to the book being set in the 1990s, this adaptation is set in the 1950s. The movie is about Bryce Loski (Calin McAuliffe), a kid who moves into the neighborhood at a young age to immediately become eye candy to his new neighbor Juli Baker (Madeline Carroll). Bryce is resistant, while Juli is persistent. She is positive Bryce will give her her first kiss and believes Bryce is just a little shy, when really he wants nothing to do with her. Juli continues up until present day middle school to give Bryce the chance to admit his “feelings” for her but doesn’t.

Juli lives across the street from Bryce and her yard is an eyesore. It’s paid for by the landlord since most of the money Juli and her family makes is given to Juli’s father’s mentally challenged brother. Bryce’s family, his dad mostly, is annoyed by Juli and her family’s crappy yard and continue to bad mouth and make assumptions about the Baker family when they really have no idea what it’s like over there.

The film is narrated by both leads more often than not. Usually we’ll get five minutes or so of Bryce narrating his side of the story, while Juli narrates her’s. It’s almost an anthology because we see what goes on from Bryce’s standpoint while hearing his thoughts at the moment and then we see what happened prior or after the events of Bryce’s because we then go to Juli. It’s confusing. But it works all the time.

At the beginning of the film I thought the narrations were only used for the audience to get affiliated with the lives of the characters and what happened before we got here. We spend ninety minutes or longer with movie characters and some films don’t even give you the damn courtesy to provide us with any kind of background information. We are supposed to just be thrown into a film with characters we sometimes don’t even find out the last names to.

Flipped is an underrated delight; a shockingly mature and poignant coming-of-age film. It’s smooth style of directing, great music, calm feeling even at it’s most stressful, and strong leads are more than I could’ve asked for. Rob Reiner is something else. A true talent in the movie business. Especially when making a movie as heartfelt as this one.

NOTE: In April 2025, I got to chat with Wendelin Van Draanen, author of the novel Flipped, about a variety of topics, including this film adaptation. Take a listen to our discussion on Flipped below — and the full interview below that:

Starring: Callan McAuliffe, Madeline Carroll, Rebecca De Mornay, Anthony Edwards, John Mahoney, Penelope Ann Miller, Aidan Quinn, and Kevin Weisman. Directed by: Rob Reiner.