Reviews

A lot of potential in this movie was realised, but unfortunately the middle of the movie was cringe worthy and disappointing.

The first part of the movie took time to build out the characters of Morgan and his mum and Dean, this helped make them believable. Morgan's relationship with mum holds this movie together.

Unfortunately the relationship between Morgan and his female friend is not believable, the script writers seem to want to show that it's ok to treat disabled people just like everyone else, but the friend's negativity goes to far and I couldn't believe in their friendship.

Sadly by the mid point of film, the drama was excessive and hard to watch. Dean and Morgan's relationship is superficial and the script missed the opportunity to show them adapting to life with a wheel chair by weaving the wonderful sub-plot conversations with doctor, bycicle shop, and landlord into their relationship (in the same way physiotherapist sub-plot). Instead Morgan and Dean's relationship superficial, toxic and full of secrets.

At the climax of the movie, the drama is suddenly forgotten, and returns to exploring the characters of Morgan, Dean and the Mum, who give great performances.

Great potential to present the reality of toxic school environments. Showing many small events that can snowball lead to people unalive themselves.

It correctly shows how easily it it for adults to be oblivious to the warning signs their kids might be exhibiting.

I stopped watching right before the court case. The story lines were becoming histerical and unrealistic. Keeping to simple 'them' and 'us' themes with characters two dimensional. The adults seem stuck in their mindset. The students only seem to bond over how to stop the tapes from becoming public.

This could have been a great story about a disfunctional community attacking itself trying to find an answer to why it's own young were exiting life. It might even have been how students band into groups, either to support and save their own or to maintain power and dominance.

Instead the writers opted to centre it on a technical story of: legalese; A battle of the law firms; how crushing legal debt destroys a family; mother and son navigate being on opposite teams.

Very glad this film exist. Sad it did not realise its full potential.

The personal journey each character takes to acceptance of a medical condition, and depicting how each individual journey inter-twines with their life. It cleverly shows how not everyone reaches acceptance and is careful not to judge progress towards acceptance.

The script let the film down, silent reflection was a frequent crutch used by the script writers. I can't understand why script writers didn't deepen the charecter development with more dialog.

The film missed a big opportunity to present all of Jeremy personalities, for instance by giving Jeremy an inner monolog for the entire film, it would have helped me connect with his passion for engineering and food and struggle with schizophrenia.

I was very glad the film developed their parents growing response as the changing medical situation.

I was also loved how the movie included the realistic but empathetic dynamic between Scott and Eliot. Eliott is depicted Maturing and making tough choices in response to Jeremy's moods. The inclusion of Scott as the ex boyfriend who appears through the entire movie is an inspired plot twist, that explores the importance of different roles in a community to work together to share the burden of medical condition.