Review of Terri (2011) by Adrian Z — 17 Dec 2011

In 1500 movies or whatever, I always complain that they rarely focus on the middle class. Otherwise normal people that do not lead extraordinary lives and are probably as pathetic as they are interesting. But that is the biggest class of people, so why are their stories rarely told? This is kind of one of those stories. I'm not sure where it ended up, and having never seen Angus, I'm not sure it's original.

Terri is a big kid with some problems at home. Mostly, his uncle is suffering from some sort of mental disorder, maybe manic-depression as he seems to be up and around and down with no real cause for either. Regardless, as Terri struggles at school, the principal takes him under his wings to help him along.

There are some real moments. I think this was billed as a comedy of sorts, and that's certainly a falsehood. For al the film's flaws, I thought they really picked out a few issues and displayed them well: Terri killing the mice and being sad when they squeaked and dragged the traps. Terri finding out about the hawk and killing more mice, then being sad when his uncle was disappointed in him. There are several other scenes along the way that really took me back. The biggest was the big drinking scene with the three kids. As dumb as it was, it had my heart pounding because I just didn't want to see what I thought I was going to see. Fortunately, it didn't happen anyway.

So all in all, the characters are better than the movie. The ending was particularly bad, and easily ruined a 7/10. All along, I was actually thinking maybe an 8/10, but it turned pretty lackluster and pointless in the final 15 minutes or so.

The other thing worth mentioned is Oliva Crocicchia. She was 15, maybe even 14 evidently when they filmed the movie. Watch out for this one. One of the prettiest girls I've seen. Emma Roberts good. Her looks make her a convincing actress and I suspect the combination of the two will land her right in the pool of large sums of money.