Product: Kids (1995)
Rating: 5.0
Challenging
As someone the same age as the main characters, I recognize that this, first off, is a realistic movie. There's a caveat- I've never known anyone personally who has drudged through their life with the recklessness portrayed in KIDS. But contrary to the claims of many positive reviews, I don't see this as a cautionary tale for parents. KIDS seems a graphic presentation of hopelessness, a directionless agitation that's perhaps more prevalent in inner-city teens than in other kids. But no teenager is a stranger to the sense of emptiness and desolation that KIDS details, if theatrically. The kids you know probably don't behave like Telly. But whatever void Telly can only fill by deflowering prepubescent girls sucks away at all of us.As for the graphic sex and accusations of child pornography-one reviewer claims the entire movie "could easily pass for a kiddie porn film"-I think the hideous images are at once the most successful and the most sickening aspect of the movie. Sex to these kids is hardly the artistically shot, passionate whirlwind we're used to watching in films. It's quick, animalistic and, most importantly, dull. Watching the sex scenes hollowed me out; Clark manages to make us feel the same desolation that drives his characters to sex and drugs. If this is a movie for parents, its message isn't: "your children are doing all this right now! Lock them up!" It's: "being a human is difficult and heart-wrenching. Being a teenager is almost impossible." I recommend KIDS to any 16+ kid with a strong stomach and to any adult with an open mind.on a side note: Rosario Dawson's eagerness, Chloe Sevigny's numbness, and Leo Fitzpatrick's doe-eyed villainy are fantastic. The acting was a huge selling point.