An earlier commenter deemed THE MUDGE BOY difficult viewing, but "worth it." I'll agree with half of that: difficult it is. To begin with, if you're old enough to be seeing this film in the first place, it's not going to enlighten you about anything you don't already know (or would likely want to dwell upon).
Adolescence is often tough going; check. It's tougher when you're a bit different - not one of the crowd; check again. It's even tougher still when grief over the loss of a loved one is thrown into the mix, complicated by that all-too-typical dynamic of poor parent/child communication (and neither parent nor child is processing his grief very effectively). Check, check and check. And for good measure, in case you needed reminding, people are capable of all sorts of cruelty, especially (apparently) in a small farming town populated with ignorant, frustrated yahoos with little better to do than taunt and abuse anyone they perceive as different, weak or both.
It all adds up to an hour-and-a-half of tension, dread and pain, culminating with a dramatic device which, though intended as cathartic, is instead gratuitous. Like excessive CGI, it's gasp-inducing but, dramatically speaking, a cheap trick, leaving you, for your trouble, with as much emotional benefit as a crack over the head with a baseball bat. I really think, if he'd tried, writer-director Michael Burke might have conjured an ultimately more effective and credible way to bring his story to its resolution.
To give credit where due, THE MUDGE BOY is well-crafted and skillfully acted, often conveying uncommon - if sometimes grotesque - verisimilitude. It's a film that wants to stay with you, but it doesn't care how emotionally brutal it has to be to accomplish this. Maybe Burke has some pain and grief in his own life that he's trying to work through, or maybe he hasn't had enough. Whatever the case, the sense I get is that he wants to leave the viewer troubled and upset. I can take that, if there's a point, or at least some kind of illumination, but as I indicated earlier, the film neither showed nor told me anything about which I wasn't already aware, nor augmented that awareness with anything beneficial.
Yeah, I know, as Alfred Hitchcock used to say, it's only a mooooovie. And maybe, like protagonist Duncan, I'm too damn sensitive for the world it depicts, though I don't think that's it. Some of the best films I've seen deal with the darker areas of human experience. I never tire of "The Sweet Smell of Success," for example, and even "Goodfellas," though I don't think I'd care to watch it again, I'm grateful for having seen once. But, all things considered, 94 minutes devoted to THE MUDGE BOY wasn't worth the difficulty of watching it, the pain it evoked or the unpleasant taste it left, and I'd really like to forget it.
Adolescence is often tough going; check. It's tougher when you're a bit different - not one of the crowd; check again. It's even tougher still when grief over the loss of a loved one is thrown into the mix, complicated by that all-too-typical dynamic of poor parent/child communication (and neither parent nor child is processing his grief very effectively). Check, check and check. And for good measure, in case you needed reminding, people are capable of all sorts of cruelty, especially (apparently) in a small farming town populated with ignorant, frustrated yahoos with little better to do than taunt and abuse anyone they perceive as different, weak or both.
It all adds up to an hour-and-a-half of tension, dread and pain, culminating with a dramatic device which, though intended as cathartic, is instead gratuitous. Like excessive CGI, it's gasp-inducing but, dramatically speaking, a cheap trick, leaving you, for your trouble, with as much emotional benefit as a crack over the head with a baseball bat. I really think, if he'd tried, writer-director Michael Burke might have conjured an ultimately more effective and credible way to bring his story to its resolution.
To give credit where due, THE MUDGE BOY is well-crafted and skillfully acted, often conveying uncommon - if sometimes grotesque - verisimilitude. It's a film that wants to stay with you, but it doesn't care how emotionally brutal it has to be to accomplish this. Maybe Burke has some pain and grief in his own life that he's trying to work through, or maybe he hasn't had enough. Whatever the case, the sense I get is that he wants to leave the viewer troubled and upset. I can take that, if there's a point, or at least some kind of illumination, but as I indicated earlier, the film neither showed nor told me anything about which I wasn't already aware, nor augmented that awareness with anything beneficial.
Yeah, I know, as Alfred Hitchcock used to say, it's only a mooooovie. And maybe, like protagonist Duncan, I'm too damn sensitive for the world it depicts, though I don't think that's it. Some of the best films I've seen deal with the darker areas of human experience. I never tire of "The Sweet Smell of Success," for example, and even "Goodfellas," though I don't think I'd care to watch it again, I'm grateful for having seen once. But, all things considered, 94 minutes devoted to THE MUDGE BOY wasn't worth the difficulty of watching it, the pain it evoked or the unpleasant taste it left, and I'd really like to forget it.