Boy Erased Reviews

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this movie but since there was a solid cast involved, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, my first thought while watching this movie was how polarized our world has become nowadays. Indeed, one hand, you have a whole group of people believing that we should give sexual orientation courses (including LGBTQ awareness) at all schools while there is another huge group of people who believes that homosexuality is actually an illness that can be cured. Seriously, how are we going to make this work? My second thought was that a major issue with Christianity, and other major religions, is that it’s based on a set of beliefs and rules which were established 2000 years ago and while it might have made sense back then, it really doesn’t nowadays and this reluctance to move on might explain why the concept is actually pretty much broken. To be honest, these points and reflections were not even developed in this movie but it still did get some extra points as it did give me some food for thought. Concerning the movie itself, it was still pretty solid but I think it might have worked better as a mini-series though. Indeed, while many have praised Russell Crowe for his performance, he maybe had only 3 or 4 conversations with the main character after all. For Nicole Kidman, it was pretty much the same thing, she was fine as well but only got slightly more to do. Even worse was the always wonderful Xavier Dolan who always showed up with some unexplained bruises and just sat there during the therapy and, for the rest, pretty much did nothing else during the whole movie. With a miniseries, they could have taken the time to develop all of these interesting characters. Of course, you could argue that the movie was actually about Jared so it did make sense that they focused on him and there is no denying that Lucas Hedges delivered once again another strong performance here. However, even Jared could have been better developed as well and the decision to go back-and-forth in time (probably the most overused and annoying gimmick right now) was definitely a mistake. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of flaws, it was still a very interesting drama and it is definitely worth a look. 

Big theme, good cast, regular film. Hedges is excellent (wouldlike to see him as Jesse Eisenberg little bro, they're so look alike) an Kidman amuses herself as a conservative spouse. A pity it ends poorly, didactic, 'meaningful'...