An average movie

Honestly, I had never heard of this movie before but since one of my colleagues had the DVD, I thought I should give it a try. To my surprise, I discovered it was based on a fascinating and heartbreaking story, a story which was based on one of the most famous case of feral child called ‘Genie’. Before watching this flick, I had never heard of this girl before but her life story is the proof that you don’t have to look for fiction to find such an unbelievable story. Apparently, I have made some research and the movie seems to be rather faithful to what happened but, honestly, the directing was pretty average and the whole thing was never above the level of your standard made-for-TV-real-life-tale. The only big name actor was Sean Young which has become nowadays a terrible has-been. She gave here a very poor performance which was just way over the top. However, thankfully, she wasn’t the main character. No, the main character was played by Tarra Steele in one hell of a performance. The most intriguing thing is that Steele barely had any acting experience (it was her 2nd movie) and, even more surprising, she has never done another movie afterwards (apparently, she seems even to have recently end up in jail! I told you life is weirder than fiction…). Maybe it is this lack of techniques and acting experience that made her performance really spellbinding to watch, I don’t know. It’s just too bad that the whole thing felt like a rather cheap TV feature. This story was just fascinating and this girl was just great, they both deserved better. To conclude, in spite its flaws, it is actually a really heartbreaking tale and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10