There’s no bet-hedging when it comes to autobiographical coming-of-age flicks, at least not the good ones. Adolescence is a meat grinder, and for all the loving rhetoric we attach to our early years, the process of growing up is often an ugly one, full of bumps, bruises, and deeply entrenched regrets. It takes commendable bravery and unwavering honesty to get one of these things across the line unscathed, which makes the safety within the genre a true contradiction. The relatability of youthful foibles can make an audience squirm in their seats, yet that same knowability provides quite the safety net, especially when combined with our endless cinematic history of teenaged mistakes and revelations. They say that every story has already been told, and for all the superhero retreads and doses of alien invasion deja vu, that truism is never more applicable than when the kids start screwing up, talking trash, and learning lessons along the way. So when you get the feeling that you’ve met Chris Wang before, try not to act surprised.

Operating as a stand-in for writer/director Sean Wang in his feature film debut, Chris (played by Izaac Wang) greets us with all the visual cues we’ve become accustomed to in the last few decades. His eyes tend toward the ground, his face is riddled with acne, and he’s positively swimming in his sister’s sweatshirt. He’s also in search of someone to be, an odyssey that Didi tracks with unrelenting attentiveness, from the forming and disassembling of friend groups, to seemingly avoidable familial squabbles, on down to modest successes and spectacular failures with the opposite sex. The film’s lack of plot isn’t a hindrance so much as a requirement of the form; life doesn’t come pre-fitted with an overarching narrative, and neither do these movies. The ones that stick don’t do so because of unique construction, but rather the grace notes that are affixed along the way.

The most notable eccentricity of Didi is its setting near the dawn of social media, with a protagonist who’s compulsively checking in on Instant Messenger and early YouTube. The internet’s effect on an impressionable generation’s sense of self is more of a hot button issue today than it was back in the film’s 2008 setting, but that won’t stop any of the millennials in the audience from breaking a sweat when the MySpace Top Eight is resurrected in all its demonic glory. Assembling your own personhood is dizzying enough in face to face interactions without the added pressure of manifesting a separate persona online, and Wang’s screenplay deftly shows how the disconnect between the two causes a half-baked mind to short circuit. The fact that Eighth Grade beat Didi to the punch six years ago shouldn’t be held against it, but directly aligning your movie with a superior predecessor is less than ideal.

The more favorable comparison point is Jonah Hill’s Mid90’s, another lightly fictionalized personal account that stands as a clear inspiration, especially considering Chris’ interest in skateboarding. They also share a fascination with the unfettered ugliness that’s often at play in the social circles of teenage boys, youthful hubris curdling into boisterous machismo as assumed personas noisily battle to claim basic believability. Wang’s young cast of unknowns is miraculous in this department, all the chest-thumping braggadocio on the surface barely masking an insecurity that’s slightly less visible but much more deeply rooted. They also have a facility with the language, and for all the cancelable verbal offenses that take place over the course of Didi, there’s never any doubting their truth. Societal mores have changed immensely in the intervening years, but Wang’s film wisely refuses to sand down the bawdier language to meet our current moment.

These include the microaggressions that Chris, a Taiwanese American, swats away like flies as he walks through the world, eager to be othered as infrequently as possible. Though his interests and vernacular couldn’t be more red, white, and blue if they tried, his homelife remains an interesting middle ground, where his mother (an excellent Joan Chen) wearily straddles cultures, and his grandmother (Zhang Li Hua) carries the torch of their family’s past. Wang’s script displays only passing interest in juxtaposing customs and traditions, instead using the contrast to capture yet another way in which Chris is forced to stratify his young life, a challenge that his many non-white friends are doubtlessly struggling with as well. Though we’re far less privy to their inner lives, Didi’s observational prowess ensures that we feel their fits and starts too, if only through inference, stilted dialogue, and evocative camera placement.

It’s also worth noting the consistency of Chris’ abrasive behavior, never one to miss a chance to make the wrong decision, Izaac Wang refusing to hide any of his considerable internal blemishes. Though Didi takes its protagonist’s unlikability to extreme lengths, it’s also the exception that proves the rule; his sloppiness and cruelty will even out over time, if the coming-of-age movies of yore have taught us anything. This is both the appeal and the detriment of familiar forms of cinema, and for all its intriguing craft and considered storytelling choices, Didi is never anything other than a very strong version of something we all know like the back of our hands. There’s safety in the rubric, the kind that stands in opposition of greatness, but invites goodness like an old friend. It’s unlikely to change the way you see the world, but you will emerge forever grateful that both ringbacks and botched first kisses happened, and will never happen again.