Review of Boy Wonder (2010) by Jesse O — 29 Apr 2013

I thought this film had a very clever ending, it's such a shame that the rest of the film was so boring and uninteresting. It's clear that this film has a minimal budget, but they make the most they can with it.

The problem I have is with the scripting, even though there is some comedic moments, the drama is overly serious to the point where it's laughable. The film also fails to create much suspense, preferring to use flashbacks to the moment of Sean's mom's murder and trying to use mysterious death to help carry the film.

It doesn't really work, because it's all fairly predictable stuff to be honest. I did like the fact that the movie chose to present its character with a bit of moral ambiguity because since he's not in his right mind, you're never sure what he's doing or if what he's seeing in actually real.

They do this by having, from Sean's point of view, by exaggerating the arguments he sees on the streets. For example, an arguing couple from Sean's view, looks considerably worse than it is, he sees the man yelling angrily at his girlfriend when in reality he's calm.

So it's not like you can trust Sean's actions, you don't know if he's doing the right thing or not. The problem with this is that the actor who plays Sean, Caleb Steinmeyer, isn't very good.

I suppose he's suppose to sell the fact that the character is an introvert with very obvious emotional problems, but I just found his delivery to be wooden and dull and it's hard to feel any sympathy for the character.

And Zulay Henao isn't great either, she wasn't entirely convincing in her role. If anything, Bill Sage as Sean's father is the acting highlight of the film as he's the most interesting character in the entire film as he's the one who has the most to carry emotionally for the way he was with Sean and his mom before her death.

I do think the movie has some good atmosphere but the rest of the film is fairly below average. The scripting isn't strong, nor is the story and the acting from the leads is largely terrible. That doesn't make this movie terrible, but it does make it very below average.