I waited a year to catch part 2 of this Thai movie, which starred the same set of actors and actresses. The pace was kind of slow and the story panned out over slightly more than two hours.
Disappointingly, Mario Maurer's performance was so lack lustre. You can trust him to play a young Jan Dara but at the point when he was supposed to be in his 30s and beyond, he looked completely out of place and unconvincing as the tyrannous patriarch of the household. Even a moustache could not save the day, I mean the movie. Maybe someday he would be a method actor but not in this movie.
I felt his friend Ken delivered a much more believable performance as his childhood friend and trusted aide.
In those days when the book was published, it created shockwaves with its adult content of polygamy, rape, incest, homosexuality (lesbianism) but I guess in today's times, the topics would hardly titillate our senses.
I too watched this coming-of-age movie about 2 weeks back but I was too lazy to post about it.
The 3 main leads are Logan Lerman, whom I remember from "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief", the household known Emma Watson, from the Harry Potter movies, and Erza Miller, who is an unknown to me.
This is a movie where Emma Watson tried very hard to get out of the shadow of Hermione to play a different role Sam to remind the audience that she is not only capable of being in the Harry Potter movies but can be a character actress to take on larger and more serious roles.
Logan, on the other hand, played the main character Charlie effortlessly and brilliantly to portray a nervous and self-conscious teenager with a mysterious past. There was no semblance of the confident and sociable half-god half-human Percy Jackson at all.
The movie explored the relationships between the three characters and their close-knit friends and how they dealt with the angst and tribulations of growing up, amidst grappling with teenage love, homosexuality, child molestation, suicidal issues. However, despite all the hardships and suffering they went through, the message was clear that they still had youth on their side. Such is the consolation of being a youth in these days.
So did I enjoy the movie? Well, it wasn't the kind that would seriously appeal to me though and that's my answer.
