Kids · reception & legacy
1995 · Larry Clark
How Kids has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A moral panic in 1995 — Disney-owned Miramax had to spin up a one-off shell company just to release it unrated — and hailed by some critics as a wake-up call. Today it's still canon, but the conversation has shifted to whether Larry Clark exploited the real teenagers in it, sharpened by the 2021 documentary 'The Kids' made by one of its own cast members.
What's debated
The forever-debate: is it unflinching vérité truth-telling about adolescence, or a middle-aged man's exploitation film wearing a documentary's clothes?
Its footprint
It's the ur-text of 90s downtown NYC skate culture — Washington Square Park, the fashion, the whole Supreme-adjacent aesthetic trace back to it — and it launched Chloë Sevigny, Rosario Dawson, and screenwriter Harmony Korine in one shot.
Where it stands
A queasy cult classic and 90s indie landmark that film fans treat as required viewing while arguing about whether they're allowed to love it.