Boy Erased is a welcome film addition to the LBGQT issues genre.
Lead actor, Lucas Hedges holds this thing together with a capacity and selflessness beyond his years. In fact, without Hedges' strength of focus, this film might struggle.
Nicole Kidman does an honest if typical Kidman turn as his devoted mother. Russell Crowe phones in his performance as Lucas' zealous, church pastor father.
Director Joel Edgerton makes a fist of his religious conversion therapist character, Victor Sykes, though the script allows this character to become two dimensional as the Sykes character development strays into cliche's.
Instead of having us scour our memories and thoughts to identify where we've crossed paths with the Sykes' pathology in our lives, writer and director succumb a measure, and craft us a character to pass judgement on.
As dramatic as he is, Sykes as a pivotal character is one of the film's disappointments. The issue and insidiousness of gay conversion therapy still existing today, its being rooted deep in the normalcy of the mainstream, is somewhat lost through Syke's lack of subtlety.
Not that Edgerton doesn't execute Syke's behaviour well, it's just that in a film dealing with these delicate issues, his tending toward a pantomime villain dumbs down what you're trying to stimulate the audience to think about.
On a very positive note, the lesser supporting cast were uniformly terrific. What Edgerton didn't get from his stars, his young, hungry support actors poured forth like seasoned veterans. Edgerton can direct, but his direction in Boy Erased doesn't clearly show us what moved him to tell the story. Fortunately, Lucas Hedges' performance as Jared Eamons does show us.
As dramatic as he is, Sykes as a pivotal character is one of the film's disappointments. The issue and insidiousness of gay conversion therapy still existing today, its being rooted deep in the normalcy of the mainstream, is somewhat lost through Syke's lack of subtlety.
Not that Edgerton doesn't execute Syke's behaviour well, it's just that in a film dealing with these delicate issues, his tending toward a pantomime villain dumbs down what you're trying to stimulate the audience to think about.
On a very positive note, the lesser supporting cast were uniformly terrific. What Edgerton didn't get from his stars, his young, hungry support actors poured forth like seasoned veterans. Edgerton can direct, but his direction in Boy Erased doesn't clearly show us what moved him to tell the story. Fortunately, Lucas Hedges' performance as Jared Eamons does show us.