“Good Boys” is yet another movie that I went to see for this blog, that received high scores on Rotten Tomatoes, even though it is far from a movie worth seeing. Good Boys is about 3 friends in grammar school that get involved with stealing a drone, stealing and buying drugs, all because of a kissing party that some young Chinese 10 year old boy is organizing. The story line is all over the place, mostly disconnected and most importantly not funny at all. Nobody laughed in the audience I was in and I was more interested in checking my watch, hoping this mostly bad movie would be over soon. There are so many scenes that were very annoying including, too many times when one or all three of the boys were screaming with these high pitched squealing sounds.

Good Boys stars Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon and Keith Williams who are close friends and fall into some ridiculous situations, the entire plot of this film. The one scene I disliked the most was when the 3 boys were trying to cross a two lane very dangerous highway to get to a mall. Only by some miracle did they manage to not get killed. There is nothing funny or entertaining about a scene like this considering the thought of a young child getting hit by a car. The problem with showing three young boys trying to cross a dangerous highway is there are children in this world who are just stupid enough to try something like this themselves and because of this, the producers of this film were extremely irresponsible by not removing this scene.

I can only guess why the critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a high 79% rating, because this is at best 40%. I do not recommend Good Boys.

I am sure there is no accident that the main character in the movie “Luce”, who is an overachieving high school student, looks a great deal like a young Barack Obama. The film Luce is highly unusual in that it is more about how people interact with someone who everybody assumes is a great person, who will be doing to do great things and is extremely likable. This story examines the reality that what people show the world is not necessarily what they actually are.
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The cast of this low budget “Indy” movie is impressive, with Naomi Watts as Luce’s mother, Tim Roth as his father and Octavia Spenser as his high school history teacher and newcomer Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Luce. What makes this story mostly work is that Luce was adopted by two white parents from a war zone and he needed years of rehabilitation starting at age 10 to recover from his PTSD due to years of being exposed to war as a young child. While Luce is a tremendous overachiever in high school, there are problems that start with the suspicions of his high school teacher Miss Wilson, played by Spenser, because of a paper that promotes violence Luce wrote for his history class. What follows are a series of events, including a scene where Miss Wilson’s mentally ill sister runs naked in the lobby of the high school, which I thought was not only unnecessary but not related enough to the main part of the story to even include in this film. The story has several other sub stories, some that enhance the story and others that seem unnecessary to the point of the film.
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The acting in Luce is of course outstanding, but what I did not like was the ending, that did left too many loose ends, and resulted in an unsatisfactory conclusion in my opinion.
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The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie is an extremely high 93% but my rating is about 80%, more for the acting and less for the story. I do recommend Luce.
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The new movie “The Peanut Butter Falcon” is a low budget art movie, that is about as different than any movie I have seen in many years. The main character Zak is played by a real actor with Down Syndrome, Zack Gottsagen – who despite his limitations does a very good and believable job with this role. The story is very simple, “with the help of Zak’s roommate, played by Bruce Dern (in yet another low budget movie role), Zak escapes from his nursing him – with the hopes of becoming a professional wrestler by attending a school for wrestlers somewhere on the coast of North Carolina”. Assigned to find Zak, is Eleanor, his caretaker played very well by Dakota Johnson, who has recovered very well from her 3 bad roles in the ridiculous “Fifty Shades” franchise. They both run into a fisherman named Tyler played by Shia LeBeouf, who is in some trouble and then most of this film involves the 3 of them trying to find this wrestling school because of Tyler’s promise to Zak.
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I thought this movie was good, mainly because of its simple story and acting, but not as great as the critics are rating it on Rotten Tomatoes at 95%. My rating would be a solid 80% with a moderate recommendation.
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