I am chuckling while writing this review because based on the trailer, it looked intriguing and inventive. It is because the movie had the potential to be fresh and wildly debatable as to how to stop a father from being more abusive to his daughter. And, boy, what an experience this movie was because this movie will definitely divide audiences. People will stand on the ambitiousness and fresh take as to how a kid and a mother will help a girl to have a better life. Others will ask, "What the hell was that?" I give points for the gritty ambition and solid narrative in the first half but then the second half nearly turns this overall product into nearly one of the most fresh but absurd movies in a long time.
An 11-year-old boy named Henry Carpenter (Jaeden Lieberher) and his younger brother, Peter (Jacob Tremblay) are living with his single mother, Susan (Naomi Watts). She is working as a waitress as she is working on writing children's novels. Henry is very keen as he uses his intellect to invest in stock markets that would financially stabilize his family for the future. Henry builds Rude Goldberg machines in his and Peter's treehouse. Henry and Susan are both fond of next-door neighbor, Christina Sickleman (Maddie Ziegler), who has recently become miserable.
Henry realizes that Christina has been abused by her stepfather, Glenn (Dean Morris of Breaking Bad). The only problem is that he is the police commissioner and has protection from the police. Henry reports the abuse to the social service and to Principal Wilder (Tonya Pinkins). Without any luck, Henry does not have any evidence to back to report an abusive situation. So, instead, he writes the activities and a detailed plan to stop Glenn from abusing his stepdaughter further more.
For the first half, it is a nice coming-of-age tale with a dark story on how to stop an abusive stepfather harming his stepdaughter. Henry is such an intellectual person that he needs to which course of action he'll take to put this guy in prison. It's too bad that the director and writers did not see an opportunity to have a great movie in there because they nearly butchered this project. Except Henry, most of the characters are so stupid. Ok, the flaw in this story is that the evidence is staring right at their faces where Christina has face bruises and emotionally, it disturbs her. And, then we get to the ludicrous conclusion, taking place at a talent show, that is meant to shock us and increase the tension and make us sigh in relief. The second half takes the movie way too seriously and tries to tempt myself and the audience to go along the crazy journey and to its destination. But, the destination is ridiculous. It's too flawed and self-centered.
The young performers are quite compelling and quite talented. They could have had a nice coming-of-age movie with just the two brothers that stars Lieberher and Tremblay. It almost had a Wes Anderson vibe with Henry being the young, smart kid who handles the finances, almost reminiscent the opening of The Royal Tenenbaums. Naomi Watts does what she can with her character but she is mostly in turmoil for most of the movie because of a tragic event (gutsy in narrative but tragic) and performs some crazy actions that becomes tonally confusing. Dean Norris is brought into this being a one-note vicious dad who knows nothing can happen to him becomes a cop. Sarah Silverman is wasted in this movie, too.
I am worried about the Star Wars franchise now because this movie's director, Colin Trevorrow will be doing Episode IX. I did have fun with Jurassic World, though. But, what he needs to do is create a story with a character's arc that is fully realized that we are truly invested upon in the franchise. And, the most nervous trait of that next movie is that he is closing that trilogy. We'll see what happens with The Last Jedi. But, the first half is solid, however, the second half is a disaster so what I did was averaged this movie from 3 stars and 0 stars to come up with the rating. There a few decent performances and a good execution here but jaw-dropping actions and icky misjudging decisions spreads all over this movie like a virus. All, I can say is holy crap! This is a ridiculous movie.
*1/2
Comments
Post a Comment