onleyrichard Review of Is This the Real World

Is This the Real World (2015)

Good enough movie ruined by a cheap cop-out of an ending

[10 September 2019]

The story begins with a teenager rebellious more by circumstance and self-respect than inclination, who is so bullied and put-upon, not only by other students, but by the administration as well. Determined to fight the situation, and rightly so, he gets involved in an improbable (but satisfying, in a movie kind of way) reactionary revenge situation, and then the filmmakers had no idea how to end it, so they left it with the protagonist being repentant (of what? of nothing), and top it off with a miracle cure right out of the Disney playbook. If you want to send the message to young people to just give up and accept injustice as a part of life they have to live with, sit them down in front of this film. But youth deserve better than this obsequious codswalllop.