Not only is she embarrassed by her suddenly oversized chest and everyone's attention to it, but she must also contend with the fact that her dirt poor family continually moves from one apartment to the next to stay ahead of landlords but remain in the Beverly Hills school district. Having just run away from a rehab center and secretly pregnant, Rita quickly becomes a role model for Vivian and welcomes her into the adult world of feminine sexuality. As the family tries to make sure that Rita remains straight and begins her first year attending nursing school, and Murray hopes to find romance, Vivian attempts to work out her feelings toward her family and her awakened sexuality. Some teens may be drawn to the story, but it's doubtful most kids will even hear about this film. As their bodies, minds, and personalities radically change, the teenage characters in such films undergo confusion, conflict, and quite often many embarrassing moments.
Filmmakers usually interpret the genre's subject matter in one of two ways.
From the humorously oxymoronic title to the bevy of idiosyncratic characters that populate the story, Jenkins has taken a reportedly semi-autobiographical look at growing up as a young woman and made it into an occasionally quite funny picture. Not only must she put up with continually moving, but also the peculiarities of coming of age with her non-understanding, all male immediate family and the fact that her chest has expanded at such a rate that she thinks she's deformed. Jenkins takes that issue of breast size and runs with it throughout much of the film, but with often mixed results. While that may mirror other young women's secret longings, it does little for the movie as a whole. In fact, much of the movie follows that pattern where some of the material works and is quite funny, while other bits fall flat.