Short Reviews: George Washington.

I’ve never watched a movie that was more self-contradictory than this. I can’t even give it a full review, so I was forced to do it this way. And no, it's not about the first President of the USA. (And I know my 'short reviews' are getting longer and longer... but whatever).

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Premise: A bunch of friends in a run-down, no-name town try to cover up a tragic accident. The movie shows how it affects them, most specifically a young boy named George with a rare handicap that gives him a soft skull so that any heavy hitting or large amounts of water can do a lot of brain damage.

Starring: Nobody famous.

My reaction: I was excited to see a movie with a primarily black cast that didn’t focus on the hardships of school or family (as a huge point, anyway), or about racism or any of that. Instead, everybody in the movie, black and white, got along fine and everybody lived in a gutter-town, so it all basically went unspoken. The first 5 minutes or so are amazing. I thought I was in for a real treat. The cinematography is amazing throughout the entire movie. Dirty and beautiful at the same time. The music is also good, yet haunting. The voice-over narration felt real and not forced or dry. But the dialogue would switch from something like beautiful slam poetry to cheesy or crap. The story went nowhere, yet things were always happening. The ‘tragic accident’ doesn’t happen until at least an hour into the movie, and George’s ‘hero’ persona goes absolutely nowhere, as well. The acting could go from amazing and natural, especially for child actors, to really, really bad. There were some shots that I had no idea why they were even included, as they added nothing whatsoever, interesting or pretty though some might be. It could have been something really special, and there were moments, I thought, that really shone through. But overall, everything fell through, and the movie just seemed to be full-of-itself artsy with no real purpose except to be full-of-itself artsy. I can’t even score this movie, because there were some really amazing things about it (the cinematography, the music, or some poetic dialogue), but for every good thing, there was an equally bad thing to negate it. Don’t you hate movies like that?

Side-Note: As I just looked them up, the director/writer and cinematographer both are going to be helming those same positions (except for the writer part) for the upcoming Apatow-produced Pineapple Express. This both excites me (as it will be visually stunning, hopefully) and worries me (for obvious reasons).