Product: Kids (1995)
Rating: 1.0
Polemics and the typical blah blah blah...
Hate to rain on the parade here (then again...no I don't! I'm lovin' it!), but I'm having trouble believing I saw the same film as the rest of these Amazon.com viewers. The only thing worse than the empty, bubbleheaded, "cute" films where "hot" WB stars cuss, screw, and pose for their fans are films like this; films that foist a short-sighted, narrow-minded view on moviegoers. (Mind you, this is coming from a 18-year old h.s. graduate, inches away from college life.)This is the kind of hollow movie that is peddled to disenfranchised middle-class suburbanites and hypersensitive parent/teacher groups that attempts to make a moral and social statement about the despair and hopelessness of underprivileged youth in major urban centers, which isn't a bad thing by any means. However, the movie throws the most explicit of images at the viewer under the pretense of "realism". Hey, I'm all for shaking up the MPAA; the rating system and censorship standards are a joke. Moreover, I do understand that the truth is not always beautiful. But parading a bunch of soulless, mumblemouthed, drugged-out sex machines in front of the camera is not art by any means, period.Now before my words are dismissed, allow me to make two points: (1) I'm not a prude; it takes a great deal to offend me (I made it through "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" in one piece), and (2) three kids that I went to elementary school with and that I knew personally wound up living lives like the ones in the film. One of them died with a needle in his arm at 15; another is working to his GED...for the third time. Seeing Telly and Casper, I was reminded of the two schoolmates who allowed themselves to be caught up in the whirlwind: tragedy personified. What I don't seem to understand are comments like "Casper Rocks!"; is anybody actually reading and listening to themselves?One final dissent: a reviewer compared this film to "Saving Private Ryan", which, for all intents and purposes, is an insult and a slap in the face to Steven Spielberg and his magnificent war epic. SPR was a movie with generally noble characters who earned our respect through sacrifice - throwing themselves at the hellish altar that is battle. As desolate and as violent as Washington Square may be, it pales in comparison to Omaha Beach, and the blood that was shed there. Moreover, the characters in SPR were brave and had some semblance of morality in them; the characters of "Kids" were wooden, self-absorbed, and perpetually hopeless. The hopelessness is even more apparent when one takes into account the ending, which provides no answers and reaches no tangible conclusion.In hindsight, Larry Clark's "Kids" illuminates not the despair of the inner city, but rather the need for films about youth that are thoughtful, wise, and not dependent on the graphic display of hormonal impulses to convey a relevant social message. I'll be waiting until such a movie comes along.