"Beautiful Thing" is one of those films I find hard to review. On one hand, it's a nice little low budget film about two young boys coming to grips with their sexuality amidst a colorful cast of characters living in the same apartment building. But on the other hand, I couldn't help but feel something was missing here.
Being a gay male myself, I haven't delved very much into the world of gay cinema, but I will say I was pleased that nothing in this film seemed intent on exploiting homosexuals, which is the very thing that has kept me away from the genre most of the time. The story unfolds in a very low-key manner, and for once I didn't feel as if the filmmakers were simply trying to cash in on the hordes of homosexuals out there that will pay to see anything they can relate to, not even realizing the filmmakers are just after their wallets.
For a movie whose central feature is the evolving love story between two teenage boys, Jamie and Ste, I felt it was void of the usual pitfalls that plague most movies in this vein--thankfully, the clichés are kept to a bare minimum, and there's very little of what I like to call "Hollywood"-isms in the film, which I was grateful for. The chemistry between the two male leads was what kept me watching the film, as I felt the writing and the casting were both spot on in this department.
If anything leaves me humbled and a little puzzled, however, it has to be the film's focus on the other inhabitants of the apartment complex, mainly a vivacious black girl who is friends with the two leads, Jamie's mother and her new boyfriend, as well as Ste's father. Jamie's mother is struggling to land a job managing her own pub, while her new boyfriend struggles with fitting in. Couple this with multiple scenes of the black female behaving oddly while singing oldies songs, and I have to honestly say I don't see what relevance any of these story threads add to the overall plot. I feel as if by writing this, someone more "educated" will step in and point it out to me, thereby making me feel stupid, but alas...as it stands right now, I felt most of these scenes were rather pointless. It also doesn't help that the end is a little anticlimactic, making me wonder why they spent so much time building up these little anecdotal vignettes of story lines if they were just going to leave them hanging in the end anyway.
By the time the end rolled around, I was a little puzzled. There are some good things here, yes, but then other things that make no sense to me as well. In any case, I recommend this to anyone looking for a nice, cute little film about young homosexuals, without all the Hollywood hoopla.
Being a gay male myself, I haven't delved very much into the world of gay cinema, but I will say I was pleased that nothing in this film seemed intent on exploiting homosexuals, which is the very thing that has kept me away from the genre most of the time. The story unfolds in a very low-key manner, and for once I didn't feel as if the filmmakers were simply trying to cash in on the hordes of homosexuals out there that will pay to see anything they can relate to, not even realizing the filmmakers are just after their wallets.
For a movie whose central feature is the evolving love story between two teenage boys, Jamie and Ste, I felt it was void of the usual pitfalls that plague most movies in this vein--thankfully, the clichés are kept to a bare minimum, and there's very little of what I like to call "Hollywood"-isms in the film, which I was grateful for. The chemistry between the two male leads was what kept me watching the film, as I felt the writing and the casting were both spot on in this department.
If anything leaves me humbled and a little puzzled, however, it has to be the film's focus on the other inhabitants of the apartment complex, mainly a vivacious black girl who is friends with the two leads, Jamie's mother and her new boyfriend, as well as Ste's father. Jamie's mother is struggling to land a job managing her own pub, while her new boyfriend struggles with fitting in. Couple this with multiple scenes of the black female behaving oddly while singing oldies songs, and I have to honestly say I don't see what relevance any of these story threads add to the overall plot. I feel as if by writing this, someone more "educated" will step in and point it out to me, thereby making me feel stupid, but alas...as it stands right now, I felt most of these scenes were rather pointless. It also doesn't help that the end is a little anticlimactic, making me wonder why they spent so much time building up these little anecdotal vignettes of story lines if they were just going to leave them hanging in the end anyway.
By the time the end rolled around, I was a little puzzled. There are some good things here, yes, but then other things that make no sense to me as well. In any case, I recommend this to anyone looking for a nice, cute little film about young homosexuals, without all the Hollywood hoopla.