- As single mom Grace juggles work, bills, and her affair with a married doctor, her daughter, Ansiedad, plots a shortcut to adulthood after finding inspiration in the coming-of-age stories she's reading for school.
- Ansiedad has always hated the fact that her mom Grace was never mature or responsible. After getting used to taking care of her mom instead of the other way around Ansiedad decides to become an adult in every way possible. With that in mind she creates an outrageous list of all the things she needs to accomplish in order to become an adult. This coming of age story shows that growing up is never as easy as it seems and that the best thing to do is stay put.
- Working class Grace Gutierrez is all talk when it comes to improving her life. In the words of her current boss, she's a bit of a flake. The problem of not taking action and not being responsible is that what she does affects her now mid-teen daughter, Ansiedad. They recently moved to Seattle so that Grace could work toward getting a white collar job at Microsoft, but instead she is a waitress at a cheesy seafood restaurant, where she seems truly unmotivated to change. She is also dating Dr. Harford, a married gynecologist. None of this sits well with generally bright Ansiedad, who attends private school on part scholarship. So when Ansiedad learns about the concept of coming-of-age in her high school English class, Ansiedad believes she has to go through the stereotypical literal process of it to come out the other end a mature adult who can take over the running of her own life responsibly regardless of what her mother does. Some of the many steps in that process include starting off an innocent, then becoming rebellious by running with the wrong crowd and losing her virginity to the bad boy, experiencing loss and death, and ultimately running away to that adult life without need of her mother. Although it is all supposed to be an act, she has to convince others that it is not, except the one person in the know, her best and only true friend, Tavita. Being teenagers, the question becomes whether they can emotionally handle what happens despite it all being an act, especially if they don't have true responsible adult guidance.—Huggo
- Grace (Eva Mendes) is a single mom raising her fourteen-year-old daughter, Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez), alone. Grace is too busy juggling work, bills, and her relationship with the very married Dr. Hartford (Matthew Modine) to give Ansiedad the attention she desperately needs. When Ansiedad's English teacher (Patricia Arquette) inspires Ansiedad with coming-of-age lessons, Ansiedad decides it's time to rebel and grow up quickly so she will finally be mature enough to move out. She creates a list of tasks she must complete to reach her big goal: run away to New York.
Her first task is to remind everyone that she is a good girl - she signs up for her school's chess team and wins a match and goes to a nursing home and regularly visits an old woman who Anisedad names 'Maud'. Next, Ansiedad befriends the most popular and hard-to-get girl in school, Valerie (Brenna O'Brien). After much humiliation and bribery, Ansiedad successfully completes this task, but is forced to act terrible toward her best friend, Tavita (Raini Rodriguez) to make this happen, calling her fat and useless. Tavita begins to cry from Ansiedad's harsh comments about her weight and runs off to her boyfriend, Ferguson (Rady Panov).
At school, Ansiedad witnesses Ferguson breaking up with Tavita harshly. He tells her that despite what they do in his basement they aren't ever going to be together, and Ansiedad hears him and tells Ferguson to leave Tavita alone. Ferguson storms away angrily after yelling "Why do you care!?", and Tavita tells Ansiedad angrily but while crying that she was never there for her, and that she hates Ansiedad. Ansiedad is very upset but moves onto her next task: have her first kiss, preferably with the boyish popular so-called womanizer Trevor (Landon Liboiron).
To target Trevor, she hides out in his car, surprising him and he gets in. She asks if he'll be at the party that night, to which he answers yes. She then asks him (knocking off her next task) to take her virginity there. He agrees, and they kiss awkwardly, after Ansiedad asks him to. Ansiedad checks off having her first kiss off her list, wiping the smile off Trevor's face, who thought that she might have liked him, but he still agrees to have sex with her at the party later.
At the party that night, Valerie ditches Ansiedad and Ansiedad spots Trevor. Wordlessly, Trevor takes her to an upstairs bedroom, much to Valerie's anger. After locking the door, they kiss, and Trevor tells Ansiedad that he thinks she's pretty, but Ansiedad tells him off for being nice to her.
Trevor then tells Ansiedad that he only acts as a womanizer to bug his dad, but Ansiedad tells him she doesn't care and asks Trevor to go in the bathroom and put on a condom while she gets ready. He enters the bathroom and reluctantly unwraps the condom, accidentally flinging it onto a light-bulb and burning a hole in it. Meanwhile, Ansiedad strips to her thong and bra and slips into the bed. She slips out of the thong under the blankets and starts to dispose of her bra when she stops and realizes how scared she is.
As Trevor walks out, naked behind the door, Ansiedad changes her mind and puts her clothing back on. Trevor asks where she's going as she bundles up her jacket and tights and runs out, clearly disheveled. Trevor wraps a sheet around his waist and runs after her. As Ansiedad descends the stairs, Valerie stops her and calls her a slut, asking her how many guys she'd had sex with at such a young age. The party guests begin dumping their drinks on her and asking her about her and Trevor's sex as she tries to convince them that they didn't have sex. But nobody believes her as she is dressed seductively, Trevor is naked under the sheet, and Trevor yells out that they did have sex. Ansiedad runs home, crying out for her mother and yelling how stupid she was as she cries. She finds her mother is not home, as she fell asleep at her co-worker's (who is in love with Grace) after getting drunk with him. Ansiedad trashes the house in anger and cries until the next morning.
The next morning, Grace awakens at her co-worker Mission Imposible (Eugenio Derbez)'s, with him gone. She hurries to the crab shack where she works and finds that someone has robbed all of the family-owned business's money, which means they will be closing down.
Grace finds Mission Impossible in the back of the restaurant and demands if he stole the money. He pleads with her, saying he did it so Grace could pay Ansiedad's tuition. Grace yells at him and tells him what an idiot he is, and he then promises to return the money to the restaurant owner. Ansiedad, heartbroken, boards a bus to New York, only to be stopped by her mother, who was told about Ansiedad's actions by the English teacher. Grace tells Ansiedad that Tavita had gone missing as well, and how sorry she is. Ansiedad and Grace fight but Grace stops Ansiedad by saying "I don't want what happened to your friend to happen to you." Ansiedad asks what happened, and Grace says that Tavita took weight pills and almost died. Ansiedad and Grace hug each other and wait at Tavita's house, where Tavita's mother indirectly tells them that Tavita is very ill but that she will be better soon.
The English teacher gives the class and Ansiedad one last assignment for the year; to write a conclusion about coming-of-age stories. As this assignment is heard, Mission Imposible returns the money, Ansiedad starts to dress and act like the fourteen-year-old she is again, and Grace goes to watch Ansiedad play chess and cheers her on, much to Ansiedad's embarrassment - but she smiles back, and the audience knows she is happy that Grace is noticing her. Ansiedad makes Tavita, who has recovered, a cut-out of the two of them and apologizes. Tavita hugs her and asks her if she wants to hang out, but Ansiedad tells her that "My mom is waiting for me.", and smiles. Grace and Ansiedad get on the bus together, and the story has ended.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content