Review: ‘I Wish You All the Best,’ starring Corey Fogelmanis, Amy Landecker, Lena Dunham, Alexandra Daddario and Cole Sprouse

November 15, 2025

by Carla Hay

“I Wish You All the Best”

Directed by Tommy Dorfman

Culture Representation: Taking place in North Carolina, the dramatic film “I Wish You All the Best” (based on the novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and one Asian) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A nonbinary teenager moves in with their older sister after being kicked out of their parents’ home, and the teen starts a new life during a period of self-discovery. 

Culture Audience: “I Wish You All the Best” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the book on which the movie is based, and coming-of-age stories about LGBTQ+ people.

“I Wish You All the Best” is a well-acted and charming coming-of-age drama about a nonbinary teenager who starts a new life after experiencing parental rejection. The movie is sweet-natured but unrealistic in some areas. That’s because after the teenager moves to a new city, the teenager doesn’t experience any prejudice from the people in this new city. The only bigotry/ignorance depicted in the movie comes from the teenager’s parents.

Written and directed by Tommy Dorfman, “I Wish You All the Best” is based on Mason Deaver’s 2019 novel of the same name. The movie (which is Dorfman’s feature-film directorial debut) had its world premiere at the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival. “I Wish You All the Best” takes place in North Carolina, primarily in the capital city of Raleigh. The movie was actually filmed in Los Angeles.

“I Wish You All the Best” begins with a brief montage of 16-year-old Ben De Backer (played by Corey Fogelmanis) having a seemingly idyllic life. In this montage, Ben (who is nonbinary and whose pronouns are “they/them”) is very close to Ben’s parents: Ben De Backer Sr. (played by Judson Mills) and Cathy De Backer (played by Amy Landecker). All three are seen watching a movie together at home in a seemingly loving and supportive environment. But everything changes one night, when Ben comes out as nonbinary to Ben Sr. and Cathy, who are religious conservatives.

This coming-out scene is not shown in full detail, but only snippets are seen in flashbacks. All viewers know is that Ben’s coming-out experience was emotionally painful, Ben’s parents rejected Ben, and Ben ran out of the home that night with no shoes on. Ben fled to a local convenience store, where Ben made a frantic and tearful call to Ben’s older sister Hannah Wallace (played by Alexandra Daddario), who lives in Raleigh. Ben tells Hannah what happened and asks her to take them to Hannah’s home, where Ben lives for the rest of the story. Ben’s 17th birthday takes place during this period of time.

Hannah, who is about 15 years older than Ben, lives with her husband Thomas Wallace (played by Cole Sprouse), who is a teacher at a high school in Raleigh. Ben and Hannah haven’t seen each other in 10 years because Hannah has been estranged from their parents, for reasons that are revealed in the movie. It should come as no surprise that liberal and open-minded Hannah has had her own issues with her conservative parents.

Hannah and Thomas (who is also liberal and open-minded) have an infant son named Cyrus, so Hannah is currently a homemaker. Thomas forges a permission notice from Ben’s parents so that Ben (who is a junior-year student) can be enrolled in the school where Thomas teaches. This type of forgery is illegal but is kind of glossed over in the movie because Ben’s parents accept that Ben wants to live in Raleigh with Hannah and Thomas. Hannah and Thomas eventually file an official application to become Ben’s legal guardians.

Ben is quiet and introverted and has an interest in fashion and art. Ben is very talented at drawing and painting portraits. Even though Ben is shy, it isn’t long before Ben meets three schoolmates who will become Ben’s closest friends: bisexual Nathan (played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley), queer Sophie (played by Lisa Yamada) and straight Meleika (played by Lexi Underwood), who considers herself to be an ally to LGBTQ people. All of Ben’s new friends are open about their sexual identities. Ben mentions later in the movie that Ben was a loner in Ben’s previous school.

Ben meets Nathan (who is a year older than Ben) when Thomas asks Nathan to give Ben a tour of the school’s campus. Nathan introduces Ben to Nathan’s friends Sophie and Meleika. Ben is immediately accepted into their social circle. In many ways, Nathan has a personality that is the opposite of Ben’s personality. Nathan is optimistic and confident. Ben is pessimistic and insecure. Ben and Nathan’s relationship evolves from a friendship into a romance.

The parents of Ben’s new friends are never seen in the movie, even though Ben sometimes spends the night at Nathan’s place. Ben, Nathan and their teenage friends never talk about what it’s like to be openly queer in their high school, which is a regular public high school, not an “alternative” school. The movie needed more realism in the teenagers’ conversations, which tend to be sitcom-ish and a bit superficial.

Ben gets mentorship from two adults who also happen to be queer: Ben’s nonbinary art teacher Ms. Lions (played by Lena Dunham) and gay transgender man Chris (played Brian Michael Smith), who is Ben’s supervisor at the senior citizen day camp where Ben gets a part-time job. It’s all so convenient how the only teachers/mentors who are shown interacting with Ben (aside from Ben’s heterosexual brother-in-law Thomas) are also queer. All of the cast members’ performances are very good (Fogelmanis and Gutierrez-Riley are the movie’s standout cast members), but the screenplay is the part of the movie that doesn’t ring entirely true.

Ben wears skirts and makeup in public and never even gets stared at by strangers. And although Raleigh is one of the more politically liberal cities in North Carolina (the city tends to elect conservative Democrats), it seems like a fantasy for the movie to depict Raleigh as a place where queer teens can go and not experience any hurtful prejudices from people who live there. Ben’s angst has mostly to do with how Ben feels about being rejected by Ben’s parents, who live in another city, which is unnamed in the movie.

Ben also gets lucky in Ben’s first romance as an openly nonbinary person because Ben’s partner Nathan is also openly queer and completely respectful to Ben. Ben’s biggest complaint about Nathan is Ben thinks Nathan is too cheerful. Ben experiences bouts of depression (in one part of the movie, Ben doesn’t leave home for a week and stays mostly in bed), but these mental health struggles are treated in a shallow way. Ben just gets a few stern lectures (not professional counseling) about this depression from the concerned adults in Ben’s life.

Many movies about LGBTQ+ people are centered on the hateful bigotry that LGBTQ+ people experience. It’s understandable if the filmmakers of “I Wish You All the Best” didn’t want to focus the movie on this type of harmful experience or for the movie to revolve around LGBTQ+ trauma. But at the same time, it’s far-fetched to erase the existence of this prejudice from the protagonist’s current community while positioning anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry solely as something from the protagonist’s past community, as represented by the protagonist’s parents.

Experiencing bigotry is a fact of life for anyone from a historically oppressed group of people. This type of toxic discrimination doesn’t magically go away by moving to a more politically liberal city. By refusing to address this reality, “I Wish You All the Best” does a disservice to its intended audience. However, if people are looking for a relatively lightweight approach to a coming-of-age story about a teenager who happens to be nonbinary, then “I Wish You All the Best” fulfills that purpose.

Lionsgate released “I Wish You All the Best” in U.S. cinemas on November 7, 2025.