Product: Kids (1995)
Rating: 1.0
one of the most overrated, pretentious films of the decade.
One day, my generation is going to get fed up with seeing themselves presented in films like this. "Kids" is the most frustrating film I've seen, and it's not because of the content. My frustration lies in the one-sided, asinine approach that Larry Clark used when filming this. Moreover, the movie has a lack of consciousness, and its the lack of a voice of reason that makes it all the more hard to stomach.This is not "educational", "a masterpiece", "a wake-up call to the world", "a portrait of adolescent angst", or even "one of the best movies ever made." Those of you who say it really shows what it's like to be a teen are bullshi++ing; if you lived a life of debauchery and hedonism as shown in the film, it's highly unlikely that you would have the mental capacity to connect to amazon.com and share your thoughts. I've known people that grew up in NYC, from South Bronx to Crown Heights to Mount Vernon: kids my age that actually faced and conquered many of the hardships in the film. The vast majority of them feel the same way I do about this film.By far, the biggest sin that the film is guilty of is overgeneralization. Whether it intended to or not, the film leaves the impression that this is behavior typical of teenagers. Of course, if I were to generalize all police officers as racist SOBs based on the incident where NYPD officers shot an unarmed Haitian immigrant 41 times, I'd look pretty foolish.The ambition was there - there's no denying that. But somewhere along the way, true-to-life storytelling was sacraficed for shock value. Ernest Dickerson's 1992 film "Juice" was a much more truthful tale about inner-city youth in NYC than this film. I'd highly recommend that film instead of this hollow morality tale pretending to be a meaningful reality-based drama.