Review of Manic (2001) by Jennifer B — 22 May 2013

I had just finished watching the movie Brick (a great movie) one Wednesday evening and I saw on the suggested titles a movie called Manic. I looked at it and saw that JGL starred in it also and if he's in a movie, I'm interested. The guys great. So I sit down the next day to watch some good cinema and I decide to put this on thinking it would be an interesting and cool movie with its fresh rating. Oh, was I wrong.

Manic begins in a hospital where we see JGL laying in a hospital bed. We later learn that he was there because he brutally beat another kid with a bat while playing baseball and got a couple bumps and bruises. He is then sent to a juvenile mental ward where he then meets other kids like him and they have their differences, but in the end they all get better and its all okay. You probably already knew that though, didn't you?

Now let me talk to you about the way this is filmed. So will say it is an interesting way to shoot a movie and they will give the filmmaker merit for trying it. I'm going to do the exact opposite. If you take an action sequence from a Michael Bay movie and have that go on for about an hour and 40 minutes and that is what this movie looks like. The camera is doing shaky cam the entire time. It not only makes it confusing and hard to follow what's going on, but it also got me a bit sick. It was the Bourne Ultimatum, without a good director. That was also a problem, the directing was poor. This is a directorial debut, and it shows.

Manic is a predictable and clichéd film that can't even be saved by its talented cast. Don't let JGL and Don Cheadle fool you, this movie sucks. The directing was bad, the writing was awful, the acting was flat, and the filming style was just terrible. This director's filmography has this and this only, that's the way it should be.