Review of Struck by Lightning (2013) by William M — 18 Jan 2013

I actually really enjoyed this movie. (My teenage neice and nephew made me buy it on demand) I loved the use of high school clichés and recognised every single one from my high school days, and that told me all I needed to know about those characters at the start of the movie. I really connected with the main character. He actually voiced out loud all the frustrations and anger I felt when I was in high school having to cope with so many of those walking clichés, who constantly bullied and sneered at me or tried to stop me from freely being who I was. I really wanted in my final year to scream out all my pain and anger at those who had put me thorugh hell for all those years, but I never had the courage to do it. Carson is wonderful in that he is at the stage in his senior year that I was when I had had enough, but, he no longer cares what people think or say about him, he is going to get into the university of his dreams and if he has to start using the bitchfork on those that used it to push him for so many years to the bottom of the high school food chain, then so be it. He does not discriminate. Everyone gets the sharp end of Carson's bitch-fork and I loved watching him say and do all that I had wanted to say and do and I was screaming along with him.

Carson had absolutely no support system at all. He had no one to support and encourage him at school and his home life was a complete train wreck, where he was the one who had to give the support, to his Mother, who had totally given up on everything, and to his grandma (whom he adored), who couldn't even remember who he was. Carson cared very much for his Grandmother and under all the biting sarcasm and bitter rejoinders, I also felt just how much Carson loved his mother. He did not respect her or understand her, but he very much loved her.

In fact Carson's biggest quality which was also his biggest weakness was the fact that he cared too much and he had escaped the pain by retreating into his dreams and living solely for the future. Carson had hidden himself away from the pain that was there in all parts of his life.

As Carson continued through his final year though, and especially when he started to connect with those people who had never really understood him and whom he had never really understood in return, I felt Carson's compassion increasing. Carson's blackmailing scheme was ironically, (as blackmail requires a certain emotional detatchment from the subjects of the blackmail), what made him get back in touch with his reality and to start actually living again I felt the compassion rising as Carson began showing a more vunerable side to his character and he began to see these clichés more as individuals who were just as trapped as he was, either through not them caring or just being too defeated to try to be anything other than what they had been labeled as being. Carson began to care about them too. His outburst against the school principle was completely selfless as he really did feel that he was speaking for everyone and he had begun to fight just as much for them as he was for himself. His shock, when he realised that those that he was fighting for, not only did not appreciate what he was trying to do, but also now hated him even more for doing it, and his justifiable anger at their inability to see what he was trying to do, was amazing to watch .

He realised that they were all blind to the danger of being trapped and it was this that confirmed to him that a life without goals and dreams isn't a life worth living.

When he found out that His mother had destroyed his acceptance letter, the pain he feels at her betrayal is another very powerful scene, as was his break-down and the symbolic attack on the 'population sign'.

At the end, when it seems as though all is lost for Carson and he is packing up his literary journals Carson begins to realise that actually he had won. Carson had managed, against all the odds to get those walking clichés, those boxed and trapped individuals to actually write for his literary magazine. After all those years of fighting to get people to write, Carson had done it. He had got them all to step outside their 'limits' and do something they would never normally have done. He had succeeded in making them think outside the box. Carson realised that in getting the Literary Journal published, he had succeeded, but he had also really begun to enjoy what he was doing. Much as his ultimate dream had been put on standby due to his mother's actions, and also the people that he had begun to connect with now hated him even more, his having the success of the literary magazine meant that He had gone from 'the boy that wanted to fly; to 'the boy that flew'. His connection with Malerie was also was an achievement in that he had never had any real freinds and now he had a best friend. It is obvious that Carson is a redeemed character at the end of the movie and I feel that If he had lived, he would have used his two years to make up for the things he did to others in his senior year and especially help Malerie and perhaps Claire find their own dreams to aim for.

Carson realised that a life without dreams or goals is a life that is not worth living, but also that a life that is just focused on the end of the goal or dream is also not a life worth living. He realised that you need to enjoy the journey to the goals as much as the desire to reach the end and you need to open yourself up to the realities of life and connect with others in order to be able to learn and grow, or in other words to grow wings and fly. Fortunately, he did realise this before it was too late and he actually was genuinely happy before he died.

(One thing I wish this film had shown was exactly what everyone had written. We got little snippets but I would have liked to have heard the whole, especially those of Claire, Remy, Scott and Vicky. The snippets we heard from these character's submissions were not throw away "I'm only writing because I have to" pieces, they were pieces that exposed deeper parts of who they were and it would really have showed more that Carson really did, even if only slightly, make his mark. These characters actually used the writing to really express themselves).

This movie is very good and it it also not like the normal teenage 'coming of age' film. It's messages are many and relevent to all ages. It is a film that actually shows the realities of teenage life, but that doesn't, as life doesn't, always have a happy ending. It is about dreams and ambition, but also about compassion and redemption. It is about characters that on the whole are unlikable, but we relate to them and empathise with them, because teenagers recognise themselves and their own life stories through these characters and we older folks remember that we were once one of them.

The acting is very strong from the whole cast, but especially from Colfer, Janney, Hendricks and Mulroney.

The film could have developed some of the scenes a bit more, and I am wondering how much of the original screenplay was cut due to the lack of funds to film the scenes, but for a low budget movie, this was pretty impressive in the amount it does communicate to the viewer.