I’m on record as being a big proponent of coming of age stories. For whatever reason, I find tales of young people crossing the various Rubicons that come with growing up to be endlessly fascinating. There’s a universality to them; while the details may change, the fundamental underpinnings are simple and constant.

That said, while I personally enjoy them all, there’s no denying that, as with any genre, there are good ones and bad ones.

My guess was that “Big Time Adolescence,” the new film streaming on Hulu, would trend more toward the latter category. Instead, the feature debut from writer/directory Jason Foley surprised me. It’s a thoughtful and heartfelt meditation on the connections we make when we’re young and the people with whom we choose to make them … not to mention the relative wisdom (or lack thereof) inherent to those choices. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it also manages to avoid the saccharine pitfalls that often undermine these kinds of stories.

It’s nice when movies have something to say.

Don’t get me wrong – I love turning off my brain and watching stuff blow up for a couple of hours as much as the next guy. However, there’s something inherently engaging about films that try to use the medium to explore larger concepts. If stuff blows up while they do so, so much the better.

There’s a long history of genre filmmakers finding ways to use their platforms to address social and cultural ideas – science fiction and fantasy, horror and thrillers and so on – in ways both subtler and more overt than can be done in more traditional films. When it’s done well, you get absolute classics – films that challenge the status quo and say something while also embracing the pulpiness of their genre roots.

When it’s done less well, you get movies like “The Hunt.”

The Blumhouse-produced film – directed by Craig Zobel from a script co-written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof – is a cross-genre effort to explore and satirize the current political divide and level of ideological discourse by way of elevated B-movie trappings. Basically, the deal is that the liberal elite is hunting vocal conservatives for sport, with all the societal and classist issues that that concept entails.

“The Hunt” has already generated controversy – the film’s opening date was pushed from September to March due to a combination of real-life circumstances and angry rhetoric – but the truth is that the vitriol would have been better-served elsewhere, because even though the baseline concept is one that might merit offense, the truth is that the film simply doesn’t commit enough to its ideals to be anything other than an incoherent jumble. Thematically, tonally, stylistically – it lacks consistency in every respect.