Steve Kuehl 2008-11-03

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

I know this kid has had a hell of a life and his performances are definitely worth watching. This film has been horribly mislabeled and advertised so I am hoping it gets a fair shake on DVD just to showcase his performance.

First and foremost, I have customers asking about this because they want to see Paxton and/or Drea De Matteo films; they are front billed on this and Webber gets buried on second tier. To be clear - Paxton has 3 minutes and De Matteo has 2 minutes and 6 lines. Zooey has a supporting role but the writing makes it to where her role is (supposedly) important (with a twist in the end) but falls well short of meeting reality. The story of a young adult living a tough inner-city life making ends meet is covered adequately in the writing, and the lengths shown to facilitate his worthiness are noble, but in the end count on it becoming tedious.

I love the whole premise of a classic movie theater being run by the time challenged curator (played by Stanton) and the foreshadowing of the end of our story being played in the first scene - but once you see how this all plays together it leaves more questions than answers and believability goes right out the window. I know I get in trouble whenever I pan a ZD film, but this film cannot hold together above a 3 star reference - I would highly recommend it just to see Webber's thorough performance and Klein showing a much darker (and misplaced for the film) character.

Ignore the whole DVD cover (front and back - "He's finally had enough" - whatever; "Phenomenal" - not really) and rent this to watch some young performers fill some vacant roles and - SPOILER - expect to serve some jail time if you try that ending and think everything is hunky dory.