I will start off this review by saying I am totally and completely biased. This movie was filmed in my hometown, shot in our actual mall, and has a bunch of locals as extras, including the film makers parents. If anyone finds this movie boring, it's because Syracuse, NY is the worlds's most boring town with high levels of poverty and where the biggest employer is the mall. This movie is scarily like watching a documentary. It captures what it is like to be stuck in upstate perfectly.
I watch this movie and I see my life when I was ages 15-20 and some of the lines sound exactly like things my friends and I have said to each other.
"Why do you work at the mall?" "What else am I supposed to do?"
I also am biased because I love Josh Hamilton, and have since I saw "Kick and Screaming." I think he does a great job in this movie, although certainly Steve Zahn is perfect as well.
The movie has little plot per se. It's not a movie about moving forward, it's a movie about being stuck in a time and a place and being unable to escape. Everyday is eerily the same and the characters are just trying to not pay attention to how bored they are. Josh Hamilton's character is trying to get over his life before, a life outside of Syracuse. It hurt him badly and he is just trying to nurse his wounds in a place where life stands still. Freak is someone who is simply trying to make a life where he is. The two men share the same habit of smoking weed, but clearly for two different reasons: one, like a true addict, to forget and try to blur his brain back to a place where he can feel comfortable without his lost love and the other, in a more juvenile way: just because it's there.
If you have ever been stuck in a situation you are simply tolerating or felt lost during your big choice making years, this movie, like "Kicking and Screaming" covers you. Yes, it meanders, but the point is that life happened before and after the movie, and this middle part is just life standing still in the giant void that is Syracuse.
I watch this movie and I see my life when I was ages 15-20 and some of the lines sound exactly like things my friends and I have said to each other.
"Why do you work at the mall?" "What else am I supposed to do?"
I also am biased because I love Josh Hamilton, and have since I saw "Kick and Screaming." I think he does a great job in this movie, although certainly Steve Zahn is perfect as well.
The movie has little plot per se. It's not a movie about moving forward, it's a movie about being stuck in a time and a place and being unable to escape. Everyday is eerily the same and the characters are just trying to not pay attention to how bored they are. Josh Hamilton's character is trying to get over his life before, a life outside of Syracuse. It hurt him badly and he is just trying to nurse his wounds in a place where life stands still. Freak is someone who is simply trying to make a life where he is. The two men share the same habit of smoking weed, but clearly for two different reasons: one, like a true addict, to forget and try to blur his brain back to a place where he can feel comfortable without his lost love and the other, in a more juvenile way: just because it's there.
If you have ever been stuck in a situation you are simply tolerating or felt lost during your big choice making years, this movie, like "Kicking and Screaming" covers you. Yes, it meanders, but the point is that life happened before and after the movie, and this middle part is just life standing still in the giant void that is Syracuse.