Dream Boy
October. 24,2008The story of Nathan, a young teenager who tries to flourish in a romantic relationship with neighbour Roy. The two young men will have to face the brutal reality of the rural south of the United States in the late 1970s.
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Reviews
SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?
Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.
A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.
If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.
As far as gay themed movies go, for the most part this is a beautiful and endearing love story handled with tenderness and all together quite amazingly done. The two leads are fantastic, the pacing, script, music and photography is outstanding. It has a rather American Beauty feel about it. About half way through it is obvious Nathan is hiding a torrid secret which could have been explored further, tackling a great social issue. This movie could have could have taken this theme and launched into being one of the best gay films of the decade. BUT, then it takes a predictable, boring and lazy path which made me VERY angry. I guess you see it coming but why oh why do so many American gay themed films have to kill off the innocent gay kid in a traumatic and horrid way. Is this some kind of recompense to get the film made? Financed? Some kind of self loathing from a writer director who needs to justify making a gay themed filmed? I am so bloody angry that this has once again occurred when blind Freddy could have taken the last 20 minutes and helped Nathan out of his shitty life and into love and light. But no, he has to be raped and beaten to death. What does this achieve for gods sake? I am very bloody angry about this.
I enjoyed the atmospheric, thoughtful and sensitive slow pace of this movie, but the dialog in important parts, and especially during the climax, was drowned out by some of the worst, most inappropriate, extremely annoying, repetitive, cloying and very loud music I've ever heard in a movie soundtrack.The dialog volume should have been turned up and the music _way_ down in this movie, and absent altogether in parts where the dialog was of utmost importance for revealing the plot. As it was, there were parts in which I could only guess what was being murmured because the music was deafening by comparison. I almost stopped watching this movie, despite liking the story and characters, specifically because of the awful "background" music that was much too often in the close foreground. Extremely poor choices regarding the music. Everything else was fine.
I thought I would like this film based on the first half. Then the story goes downhill like a runaway pickup truck. I can't help but think of "The Mudge Boy" (and "Fishbelly White") which also starts out with a lot of potential but the writer puts in a story arch that ruins the tale and turns what could be a good experience into a downer.The two lead actors were very good in their roles and the photography is lovely. The music was often annoying. This may have made a better short than a feature-length film with a rewrite of the turn of events. If it's a tender love story you want, don't watch the second half of this film. And the title "Dream Boy" is completely misleading. The film is based on a novel which I haven't read but if the stories are the same, neither should be called "Dream Boy."
I'm a gay man so I can speak with some credibility about the portrayal of the main characters in this film. There is no chemistry portrayed here and although the leads are cute and the situations realistic, for the most part (teenagers take every moment for personal connections no matter how inappropriate or imprudent they may be) we are left with a coming-of-age story that while sweet and tender against all apparent odds is betrayed by a thin-as-paper, muddled plot that is formulaic and unsatisfying. The adults are cardboard and the parallelism with "Brokeback Mountain", hyped on the cover, are obvious and contrived. Nowhere do we get the deeply religious/conservative milieu of the 70's Deep South in which the primal and quite beautiful emotional drive of these two boys is cast, beyond episodic church scenes with flatulent pastoral murmurings. So much could've been made of the story but it's a wasted effort I'm afraid.