Tribeca 25' Lemonade Blessing Mixes Faith, Puberty, and First Love with Brutal Honesty - Review

Jake Ryan leads a raw coming-of-age tale soaked in Catholic guilt, Nintendo, and teen chaos.

Somewhere between Lady Bird, Mid90s, and Igby Goes Down lives Lemonade Blessing—a confessional, Nintendo-soaked puberty spiral wrapped in Catholic guilt and teen chaos. Directed by Chris Merloa, the semi-autobiographical feature makes its world premiere at Tribeca 2025 (June 5) and stars Jake Ryan as John Santoui, a kid trapped between faith, fractured parenting, and the feral emotional chaos of adolescence.

John is sent to a strict Catholic school after his mom (Jeanine Serralles) decides it’s time to get serious. Dad (Todd Gerhardt as Pete Santucci) is still around, just not in the way that counts. With two wildly different homes to navigate—one drowning in religious rigidity and the other steeped in shrugged-off responsibility—John’s world becomes a pressure cooker.

Enter Angelo (Miles J. Harvey), Lilith (Sky Alyssa Friedman), and a ragtag crew of foul-mouthed freaks who fantasize more about porn than reality. They’re all obsessed with finding love, asserting dominance, and hiding insecurity behind jokes and dares. Lilith, in particular, is the quintessential manic heartbreaker—asking John to prove his feelings in messed-up ways that will hit home for anyone who’s ever confused affection with performative devotion.

There’s a sharp bite to Merloa’s script, especially in how it paints the inner monologue of teenage boys raised by screens, split families, and silent trauma. The religious angle is potent too: John’s struggle isn’t just with love and loneliness—it’s about saving his parents’ souls in the afterlife. That’s a heavy load for a 14-year-old, but Lemonade Blessing never treats it with condescension. The weight is real. So is the confusion.

Visually, the film dances between memory and fantasy. John’s Nintendo obsession is used as a clever motif for escapism, showcasing everything from GameCube to Switch. Moro uses gaming as a language, John speaks fluently, while the adults in his life stammer through spiritual dogma and broken promises.

The cast is charming across the board, especially Ryan as the emotionally stunted but deeply thoughtful John. Sky Alyssa Friedman’s Lilith is electric, commanding attention in every frame. And while some of the high school dynamics echo familiar tropes, Moro’s honest approach keeps the story grounded in authenticity rather than cliché.

If there’s a knock, it’s the somewhat episodic structure—flashes of flashback and mini-arcs that sometimes cut the film’s momentum. It feels like a TV show at times, which isn’t necessarily bad but leaves a few narrative strands dangling. Still, for a debut that’s this personal and layered, you can forgive a few rough edges.

Lemonade Blessing is a sincere, messy, and painfully funny reminder of how brutal growing up can be—especially when the people teaching you how to love don’t even love each other. It’s a film for kids who were caught in the middle, for parents who forgot how fragile growing up is, and for anyone still figuring out what it means to believe in anything at all.

Rating 3.5/5