At the very least you have to give Steven Bagatourian and Aric Avelino props for being the very first kids on the block to jump on the Crash-Paul Haggis bandwagon. They may not be very original, but boy are they quick on the draw.
Take your (soon to be) standard template of multiple, disparate, interweaving story lines, add a dash of hard-hitting social commentary (guns, racism, sexism, whatever is hot), throw them all together, and pray something sticks.
Unfortunately in this case, nothing does.
What you get is a movie that comes off as disingenuous at best since all of the "facts" (gun-facts, single-mom facts, modern day high school student-facts) feel like they came from cursory research from magazines or books of the week. None of the situations or characters feel genuine and to be quite frank, the bulk of this movie is pretty darned contrived.
The social commentary provided by this movie isn't especially hard-hitting either. Whether this timidity comes from a reluctance to offend or their unwillingness to go too far out on a limb lest they be called on their B.S. assumptions about everything they are writing about is unknown. I'm willing to guess the latter since there is ample evidence in this movie of their ignorance of the subject they have chosen to give the Haggis-treatment.
1 out of 10.
Take your (soon to be) standard template of multiple, disparate, interweaving story lines, add a dash of hard-hitting social commentary (guns, racism, sexism, whatever is hot), throw them all together, and pray something sticks.
Unfortunately in this case, nothing does.
What you get is a movie that comes off as disingenuous at best since all of the "facts" (gun-facts, single-mom facts, modern day high school student-facts) feel like they came from cursory research from magazines or books of the week. None of the situations or characters feel genuine and to be quite frank, the bulk of this movie is pretty darned contrived.
The social commentary provided by this movie isn't especially hard-hitting either. Whether this timidity comes from a reluctance to offend or their unwillingness to go too far out on a limb lest they be called on their B.S. assumptions about everything they are writing about is unknown. I'm willing to guess the latter since there is ample evidence in this movie of their ignorance of the subject they have chosen to give the Haggis-treatment.
1 out of 10.