It’s hot, Janet Jackson is playing on the radio, and it is 1989 in Southside Chicago. Barack Obama, shirt unbuttoned and smoking a joint, is reading Maya Angalou’s "Song of Solomon." This is the first time we see our current president on screen, and it is glorious.

“Southside With You” tells the story of a driven, intelligent lawyer Michelle Robinson (it is truly her movie), going out with Barack Obama, a summer associate with charisma and confidence in spades.

Parker Sawyers plays Barack Obama as a confident, young, and sometimes bitter young man. Sawyers manages to convey in key moments that there's a flicker of the man he will become, one who would say, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Obama in this portrayal isn’t perfect -- far from it, actually. He is a pack-a-day smoker, always late, and more than a little judgmental, but he has good intentions. He doesn’t want to sit idly by; he wants to be the change. He would maybe consider politics.

Tika Sumpter’s Michelle Robinson is quietly controlled, a loyal daughter, hard worker, and someone who never runs away from the label of "smart girl." Her anger and frustration over the patriarchal structure of her law firm, and the double jeopardy of her skin color and her gender, and longing to do work in legal aid but still be financially solvent all comes through with no melodrama but a quiet determination. Robinson may be conflicted, but Sumpter, with her crisp diction and steely stare, makes sure you know that this women will find her way. It’s an undeniable strength which makes Sumpter the films MVP.

The movie’s conflict is simple. He says it’s a date. She says it isn’t. Even if we know how the story ends, it is infinite fun to see them get there. As they wander through Southside Chicago, they go to a community event, Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” an Afrocentric Art Exhibition, and the final moment at Baskin Robbins, you get to see two young people desperately trying to make a place for themselves, and maybe one day even try to change it.

This is where the movie hits home. The movie, packaged as a presidential biopic, can be a touchstone for a generation of millennials: two young people, one of whom lives at home, who have an overabundance of student loans, trying to make a difference. Two young people dealing with systematic racial and gender oppression, and trying to vocalize how to overcome it. Two young people who want to be successful, who want to work hard, and who want to change the world but have constant roadblocks put in their way.

Sound familiar?

This is our movie, just as Barack and Michelle Obama were our president and our first lady. The film doesn’t canonize the former. Instead, it gives us a new look at our flawed, hopeful, and hard-working role models just as the Obama presidency ends.