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Here is a link to the trailer for the movie on youtube. From the trailer alone you might imagine that the movie is a Narnia-esque adventure. DO NOT LET THIS FOOL YOU. The movie has nothing to do with that. In fact, you see just about every second of CGI from the movie in that trailer.
First I shall detail all the pros of this movie. It has high production values, and excellent acting. It has some very good character development. It is also a well-written (sort of), very emotional movie. It has some pretty good dialog and a nice pretty message by the end, which is a pro because the entire movie works towards this message instead of throwing it in your face during the last couple minutes.

But now I must spew the cons. To do that, I will compare this movie to the standard 3-act structure that movies have.
Introduction to three act structure: A movie starts with an Initiating Action, which is to say the first “thing” which “happens” in a movie. This is followed by Exposition which explains stuff and is generally less interesting and has less action than the rest of the movie. Then comes a Big Event, a rising action, a climax, some falling action and the resolution.
This movie never quite reaches the Big Event. It is a giant set up for stuff that never happens. This is a movie without a plot. This movie is what happens when you take the Exposition part and then stretch it out over the entire movie, removing the plot. The only thing left underneath is a movie’s worth of character development. There are many key actions and revealed character traits. In a normal movie these things would show up later on and pay out by, let’s say, helping save a character’s life. None of these actions ever come up later or pay out.
Besides that monstrous flaw of a negative to this movie, there is another: overuse of stereotypes. Stereotypical picked on poor farmboy befriends “stereotypical” new-girl-in-town. He has a stereotypical mean teacher and stereotypical mean older siblings and nice younger sibling. He has stereotypical stressed out parents. The teacher even uses a blackboard, but to modernize the movie she tells two kids to put away their Gameboy Advance SPs and tells the children not to cheat by downloading essays off of the internet. Not a single computer or printed piece of paper are seen in this movie. To mix things up all of the characters eventually break out of their stereotypical roles and show some depth, but that’s more of a Band-Aid than reconstructive surgery.

To sum it up: No plot, overuse of stereotypes, and I’m pretty sure the main characters are eating some shrooms they found in the forest. Do not watch this movie.

Posted in Movies