Review of 12 and Holding (2006) by Ajay P — 27 Jan 2014

The young actors turn in very convincing performances, but the weird thing for me was the tonal inconsistency. Often it felt like a happy bright 90s disney movie mixed with heavy adult themes of American Beauty or something like that.

The story regarding the young girl's sexual awareness and how she went about her "love" crush on Jeremy Renner was just really weird and felt so out of place with the rest of the movie-it was like watching three separate movies at times even.

The young fat kid's dynamic with the family was at times funny even if it was dark, but what he decides to do to his mother in the finale of his story is just so juvenile and truly evil that there's no justification for his actions.

It just seemed like an exercise for the writer to design a nightmare scenario for the parents with a completely unjustified and idiotic child. And then the twin's story seemed completely unbelievable- becoming "friends" with his bully that caused his twin brother's death was at first, endearing and I thought it was gonna lead to a nice friendship-but his evil underlying scheme that leads to a murder at the end felt so left field for me.

How this bully thought this kid was really going to hitch a ride to his father's state and live with him, ha! Once again, the writers are having a field day for ridiculous adult scenarios involving children.

It was engrossing, sure and I like these character studies about family dynamics, relationships and mental issues but this one didn't quite mesh for me. And the ending was intentionally left open ended so as for us to fill in the blanks, but I didn't really feel like we had enough information to do so.