An average movie

I really didn't know what to expect from this flick since I have a weak spot for John Goodman, I thought I should give it a try anyway. Eventually, I thought it was an interesting feature about the survival wild child genre. I also liked the fact that almost all the characters were some really nice and decent people even the director of the juvenile 'prison' was not really bad. Movies can be pretty cynical and it was rather refreshing to see a flick without evil at every corner and that's too bad they felt compelled to add the 'evil' police guy who's chasing Moon throughout the whole thing. Of course, I understand that they added him to add some tension, drama and even humor but I think it would have been interesting to see a movie populated with only some nice people. The other issue I had was that the movie didn't really know what it wanted to be. I think it was supposed to be a family feature (I'm not even sure...) since the whole escape was treated like a game and when the kids were all alone in the woods, they made it seems way too neat and too easy. On the other hand, you had some really dark and realistic scenes which didn't really fit the genre (for example, in the opening scene, you had Moon carrying his dead father and burrying him...). So, it kept switching tone between family-friendly and dramatic-realistic and it felt ratheruneven. Still, in spite of its flaws, it was a nice take on the survival movie and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10