How Tommy Lemenchick Became a Grade 7 Legend
2017 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Bastien Alexandre
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age, romance
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
Twelve-year-old Ophelia, who has a rigorous process for choosing the recipient of her first kiss, invites video-game-obsessed Tommy Lemenchick over — and discovers what makes him a legend.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The setup screams *Wes Anderson does middle school*, but Alexandre refuses the precious route—instead he lets the joke breathe in the gap between Ophelia's obsessive ritual and Tommy's complete obliviousness, which is honestly where all the real comedy lives.
A cleanly constructed coming-of-age that knows its DNA (the lineage of indie romance shorts circa 2010s), though it never quite pushes past the template into something formally generative.
The masterstroke is how the film stays locked in Ophelia's POV while treating her *process*—that meticulous decision tree for the kiss—as the actual emotional center rather than the punchline; it's a structural choice that makes the tenderness land.
Reviews
This is a movie that transports you, laden with nostalgia of both classic video games (even has its chapters separated in levels) and childhood, specifically your first kiss. The short dives into the mind of a young girl effectively, using humor as a way to articulate Ophelia's monumental experience.