Review of 12 and Holding (2006) by Emily J — 30 Aug 2008

[font=Book Antiqua][b][size=4]I was very impressed with the acting in this film and the stories were quite compelling. However, I didn't really like the endings to any of the three stories. The boy whose brother is killed by another kid gets away with revenge murder.

And his feelings of wanting revenge is confirmed by his mother and by the image of his dead brother in the mirror. Kind of a strange revenge fantasy I thought. And what this kid did was much worse in my opinion than the original killing of his brother, which was an accident.

Then again you get the impression that the kid that killed his brother was likely headed for a life of crime and prison anyway. The other story of the 12-year old Asian girl that has a sexual crush on the older guy was a little awkward.

But in this story, the director decided to go Hollywood happy-ending, along with the other story about the fat kid and him teaching his parents to diet. This is where the stories sort of fell apart for me.

One story has a negative message I believe and the other two get the stereotypical happy Hollywood ending. And of the three endings, I think all of them are very unlikely scenarios. All in all a surprisingly good movie that I thought ended poorly.

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