I've never written a review on here before because usually I find some other reviewer that articulates more or less what I feel, so there's usually no need to add anything. But this movie only has good reviews! And I've just watched it and happen to think it's absolutely dire...
Let me qualify first of all that my dislike for this movie is not due to the gay-friendly themes etc. I love gay culture and have seen plenty of gay movies. I go to the Turin Gay Film Festival every year. So it's not that. Indeed I watched it after seeing the trailer from Mary Steenburgen's IMDb page and thinking it might be an OK, fun little road movie, and interestingly different, what with the kid being gay and all. So there was no prejudice, in fact quite the opposite. I was looking forward to a gay kid being the 'hero' for once.
But let's get to the first problem with this turkey. The movie is supposed to be set in 1987. I was already puzzled in the trailer by the fact that the hairstyles, clothes, etc, were more like 1979. And the whole film confirmed this. It just made no sense. I thought, maybe it was originally supposed to be set in '79 but then they realized they'd used a song from 1987, or a car (I'm no expert), or whatever, so they decided to change the caption at the beginning at the last minute? But then there was a photo of Reagan in the headmaster's office... So it WAS supposed to be the 80's. Well, maybe 1981 at a stretch, but not 1987, no way. Even the photos on the walls in the kids' bedrooms... OK I suppose the gay kid was supposed to be 'uncool', but still. No, it was just all wrong - never have I seen a worst reconstruction/representation of a year in a movie. And I was around at the time, I was just a little younger than the characters were supposed to be... OK maybe I wasn't living in Normal, Oklahoma, where the movie is mostly set, but you'd just need to watch the music videos from that year to see that the fashions and stuff were totally different... I mean, even accounting for it presumably being a backward place, in what parallel universe would ALL women (of all ages) have had Farrah Fawcett flicks in 1987?? The boys at the school, too, had 70's-ish hair. There were no mullets, no frizzy 80's hairstyles, etc, to be seen... It didn't feel like 1987 AT ALL. I mean, '87 was the Beastie Boys, house music, Whitney Houston, mullet-haired power ballads and stuff. Couldn't Dwight Yoakam (who plays the kid's scary father) tell 'em what it was like??
Wait a sec, I've just remembered they talk about the Shuttle tragedy happening the year before at some point! So it was really meant to be 1987!!
But that really wasn't the main problem. I could overlook this if the film was any good, but it wasn't. Not funny, not poignant, the usual unbelievable character development arc, really it was practically as bad as "I Love You Beth Cooper". So if you loved that movie, by all means check this one out. In that movie I'd sat through it all because Hayden Panettiere is nice to look at, this one I sat through because Juno Temple is nice to look at (I'm an old man... but she is hot). Only reason. But even her little outfits with the shorts - even those were completely anachronistic... who the hell wore hot pants like that in 1987?? NOBODY. Certainly not the school hottie.
The good cast had also fooled me. I don't know why William H Macy or Mary Steenburgen would attach their reputation to a film like this... I just don't get it. Maybe they wanted to be politically correct or something.
The movie is very short, thankfully. But that meant that any character development was too fast and unrealistic and totally non-moving (again, pretty much like "I Love You Beth Cooper"... which was even worse than this, though). I was so expecting the kid to turn up and sing at the end, that erased any chance of me getting moved - and I love being moved, I love cheesiness, so it wasn't that either. It was just a flat, annoying movie. The fact that it was competently shot and acted only makes it worse, in my opinion, because then you wonder why they got it all so wrong. I mean, going back to the time setting... I'm all for stratification in movies, those movies where it's all from the year they're set in are silly too, as if everything from previous years disappeared... But this was too much in the other sense. Really absurd. The tone was just all wrong, incongruously going from gross-out humour-like moments, to soppy tear-jerking ones that didn't elicit any emotion from me, and I cry at any old schmaltz. As a comparison, I'd loved Napoleon Dynamite, I think they got that just right, the tone and everything, and I was moved at that!
I gave it 1/10 because of Juno Temple. And I guess I must've chuckled maybe twice. Otherwise it'd be a zero... despite the professional cinematography and the acting. The soundtrack was also meh. If they were that backward in Normal, they'd have had more mainstream tastes in 80's pop music. But I guess rights to Madonna songs are more expensive.
Oh if you're a foot fetishist, you'll like a completely gratuitous scene where Juno sticks her feet up to the camera and paints her nails, a really long, pointless shot. Worse than Tarantino!
Milla Jovovich was pretty good, too, but it's depressing to me that now she plays the mother. I feel old. Note to self: stop watching teenage movies...
Let me qualify first of all that my dislike for this movie is not due to the gay-friendly themes etc. I love gay culture and have seen plenty of gay movies. I go to the Turin Gay Film Festival every year. So it's not that. Indeed I watched it after seeing the trailer from Mary Steenburgen's IMDb page and thinking it might be an OK, fun little road movie, and interestingly different, what with the kid being gay and all. So there was no prejudice, in fact quite the opposite. I was looking forward to a gay kid being the 'hero' for once.
But let's get to the first problem with this turkey. The movie is supposed to be set in 1987. I was already puzzled in the trailer by the fact that the hairstyles, clothes, etc, were more like 1979. And the whole film confirmed this. It just made no sense. I thought, maybe it was originally supposed to be set in '79 but then they realized they'd used a song from 1987, or a car (I'm no expert), or whatever, so they decided to change the caption at the beginning at the last minute? But then there was a photo of Reagan in the headmaster's office... So it WAS supposed to be the 80's. Well, maybe 1981 at a stretch, but not 1987, no way. Even the photos on the walls in the kids' bedrooms... OK I suppose the gay kid was supposed to be 'uncool', but still. No, it was just all wrong - never have I seen a worst reconstruction/representation of a year in a movie. And I was around at the time, I was just a little younger than the characters were supposed to be... OK maybe I wasn't living in Normal, Oklahoma, where the movie is mostly set, but you'd just need to watch the music videos from that year to see that the fashions and stuff were totally different... I mean, even accounting for it presumably being a backward place, in what parallel universe would ALL women (of all ages) have had Farrah Fawcett flicks in 1987?? The boys at the school, too, had 70's-ish hair. There were no mullets, no frizzy 80's hairstyles, etc, to be seen... It didn't feel like 1987 AT ALL. I mean, '87 was the Beastie Boys, house music, Whitney Houston, mullet-haired power ballads and stuff. Couldn't Dwight Yoakam (who plays the kid's scary father) tell 'em what it was like??
Wait a sec, I've just remembered they talk about the Shuttle tragedy happening the year before at some point! So it was really meant to be 1987!!
But that really wasn't the main problem. I could overlook this if the film was any good, but it wasn't. Not funny, not poignant, the usual unbelievable character development arc, really it was practically as bad as "I Love You Beth Cooper". So if you loved that movie, by all means check this one out. In that movie I'd sat through it all because Hayden Panettiere is nice to look at, this one I sat through because Juno Temple is nice to look at (I'm an old man... but she is hot). Only reason. But even her little outfits with the shorts - even those were completely anachronistic... who the hell wore hot pants like that in 1987?? NOBODY. Certainly not the school hottie.
The good cast had also fooled me. I don't know why William H Macy or Mary Steenburgen would attach their reputation to a film like this... I just don't get it. Maybe they wanted to be politically correct or something.
The movie is very short, thankfully. But that meant that any character development was too fast and unrealistic and totally non-moving (again, pretty much like "I Love You Beth Cooper"... which was even worse than this, though). I was so expecting the kid to turn up and sing at the end, that erased any chance of me getting moved - and I love being moved, I love cheesiness, so it wasn't that either. It was just a flat, annoying movie. The fact that it was competently shot and acted only makes it worse, in my opinion, because then you wonder why they got it all so wrong. I mean, going back to the time setting... I'm all for stratification in movies, those movies where it's all from the year they're set in are silly too, as if everything from previous years disappeared... But this was too much in the other sense. Really absurd. The tone was just all wrong, incongruously going from gross-out humour-like moments, to soppy tear-jerking ones that didn't elicit any emotion from me, and I cry at any old schmaltz. As a comparison, I'd loved Napoleon Dynamite, I think they got that just right, the tone and everything, and I was moved at that!
I gave it 1/10 because of Juno Temple. And I guess I must've chuckled maybe twice. Otherwise it'd be a zero... despite the professional cinematography and the acting. The soundtrack was also meh. If they were that backward in Normal, they'd have had more mainstream tastes in 80's pop music. But I guess rights to Madonna songs are more expensive.
Oh if you're a foot fetishist, you'll like a completely gratuitous scene where Juno sticks her feet up to the camera and paints her nails, a really long, pointless shot. Worse than Tarantino!
Milla Jovovich was pretty good, too, but it's depressing to me that now she plays the mother. I feel old. Note to self: stop watching teenage movies...