50 WAYS OF SAYING FABULOUS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: From New Zealand comes Stewart Main's
comedy/drama of three teenagers, two boys and a
girl, all confused about what gender roles they
want to take. None of the characters are
believable. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4) or 4/10
One can generally tell if young teenage actors are speaking and behaving like real teens or if they are just mouthing lines written by adults. The acting in 50 WAYS OF SAYING FABULOUS is simply not real and convincing enough to sell the story. The fault may be with director and screenwriter Stewart Main's script. In any case there is the feeling hovering over most of this film that it was written by adults to preach.
Billy, age thirteen or so (played by Andrew Patterson), is fascinated by a television hero played by a girl with a ponytail. He does not have a crush on her; he wants to be her. He even sticks a cow's tail under his hat to look like a ponytail. This does not seem to be a huge problem for him, indicating that people are a lot more tolerant in this New Zealand ranching community than Americans would be. Billy's sister Lou (Harriet Beattie), on the other hand, is a tomboy who is not just accepted as one of the boys on the rugby team, she is actually better than any of the boys, while never being as violent as the boys.
Billy becomes friends, sort of, with Roy (Jay Collins), a quiet and sad-faced newcomer to the area. Roy is interested in Billy romantically and Billy is tentative about starting a gay relationship. The relationship is complicated when a new hired hand comes to the ranch, Jamie, who is straight but a real hunk. Billy is attracted to him and Jamie is either oblivious or ignoring the situation.
Main tries to put messages into the film lessons like to not believe in gender stereotypes. But his people seem to be taken more from wishful thinking than from the real world. Some of the music that goes with the film is sugary sweet and the science fiction television show the kids all watch seems like a patronizing stereotype of television science fiction.
There is one minor action scene in which someone falls in a way that seems physical impossible and ends lying in a position that seems equally impossible. If this were Main's first film I would expect he would improve with time. However, I am surprised to see he has been directing films since 1985 (according to the IMDB). I rate 50 WAYS OF SAYING FABULOUS a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale or 4/10.
Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2006 Mark R. Leeper
-- rec-arts-movies-reviews@robomod.net mailing list http://www.robomod.net/mailman/listinfo/rec-arts-movies-reviews
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews