Life's Poison (2011)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
After years of abuse by his father, 18-year-old Eliyah (Devon Smith) comes to think that the only way to be a "real man" is being emotionless and cruel to those around him. After a dramatic incident effects his life, the teenager starts to think that perhaps his father's way wasn't the best for those around him. This is the second film I've seen from the Scenarios USA series and after I was done with this one it seemed that I could just copy and paste my review of the first one. Again, I don't want to sound mean myself because the "message" that abuse isn't good is something I agree with 100% but just because I agree with the message doesn't mean that the movie is good. This is a pretty poor movie, although I'll at least give credit to director Malcolm D. Lee for making the film look good and professional. The problem I had with the film is that it's message is beaten over the viewer'd head so hard that you quickly grow tired of it and you really don't care what's happening in the film. The teenager comes off as such a jerk early on and we're never really given a reason to like him and when his "change" happens it just feels forced. It seems that there's no character development here and instead there are just scenes thrown together to get the message across. I thought Smith was good in the lead but it's clear that a different story and execution of it were needed.
* 1/2 (out of 4)
After years of abuse by his father, 18-year-old Eliyah (Devon Smith) comes to think that the only way to be a "real man" is being emotionless and cruel to those around him. After a dramatic incident effects his life, the teenager starts to think that perhaps his father's way wasn't the best for those around him. This is the second film I've seen from the Scenarios USA series and after I was done with this one it seemed that I could just copy and paste my review of the first one. Again, I don't want to sound mean myself because the "message" that abuse isn't good is something I agree with 100% but just because I agree with the message doesn't mean that the movie is good. This is a pretty poor movie, although I'll at least give credit to director Malcolm D. Lee for making the film look good and professional. The problem I had with the film is that it's message is beaten over the viewer'd head so hard that you quickly grow tired of it and you really don't care what's happening in the film. The teenager comes off as such a jerk early on and we're never really given a reason to like him and when his "change" happens it just feels forced. It seems that there's no character development here and instead there are just scenes thrown together to get the message across. I thought Smith was good in the lead but it's clear that a different story and execution of it were needed.
