Sunday, October 9, 2011
The Wise Kids
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Religion, family, and the teenage search for truthful identity converge in The Wise Kids, part of ImageOut's 2011 Youth Project Film Series. At 6:45 today catch the feature and what is sure to be a lively Q&A with lead actor Tyler Ross at the Little Theater.
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5 comments:
The pace was slow but the characters were very believable. A few problems with music. Southern Baptists/ Evangelicals are into praise bands and a few singers who lead the Congregation but you would never hear "Of the Father's Love Begotten" or "Hodie Factus Est" ever. It did a good job of showing how those who question find more questions. Those who think they have the answers don't (can't?) question.
I agree the pace was very slow. The long silent pauses with the eerie music are a good dramatic tool, but were used way too excessively. Given the amount of material covered this would have been a good 40 minute movie.
I did like the situations this story covered and thought the cast was very strong.
I loved this film. Even if it was slow, the actors all give great performances and there are very few film in my opinion that deal with religion and homosexuality, especially among youth. (There are a lot of documentaries but not a lot of feature films. Or if there are I haven't seen them.)
Tyler Ross is adorable. I met him at the Splash party. He was standing by himself for a moment, so I went over, saw he had a tag on, and when I looked at it and saw "The Wise Kids" I was like "Oh wow..." So anyway we talked for a bit. He's really nice...
Then after I saw the film, during the Q&A I just wanted to run up to Tyler and kiss him—but I didn't 'cause that would have been very inappropriate and I could have risked being banned from ImageOut—but...really, I like films like this.
Yeah, the "youth ones" seem to be my favorites. It may very well be due to the fact that my personality is somewhat of a "youthful sage". (People who know me are probably not surprised...)
Sadly, this is probably my least favorite film so far this year---I took a gamble on it (I historically don't like queer religious/spiritual themed films) because I had heard it was winning awards and I like to support the queer youth films....and, sadly, that gamble didn't pay off. Kind of cliche----I didn't think it told any story we haven't really seen before...in any way that we haven't already seen it (AND it was too slow and too long). I'm kinda surprised this is being so well received by jury review for awards!
The one positive thing I'll say is that I do the cast of the film were very strong. This film is kind of the opposite of "Morgan" for me. With "Morgan," I thought the writing was wonderful but the actors wouldn't really do it justice....with this film I think a very talented cast were given mediocre material with which they could only do so much.
I liked this film, but there were a few things about it that made it not a key film for me. The actors were all great, and some of the scenes (especially near the end) were wrenching and well done. But the "perfect mix", those accepting and not, questioning and unwavering, happy and depressed... seemed a bit too contrived.
Overall the story was touching, and it stayed on the light side while conveying some interesting messages. The fact that it doesn't present all the answers, and touches on things like blind faith and questioning without calling one out as good or bad was great. But in the end, it was just too convenient and contrived to make it feel real.
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