Review of The Black Balloon (2008) by Tracey W — 12 Sep 2009
New Zealand has been on a bit of a tear lately making good little movies of a certain heart warming variety as well as any number of Hollywood films. Per capita the country is way ahead of the curve.
This one, well the movie is so overwhelmingly joyless, so profoundly embarrassing it is worth turning off. It's a pretty standard boy meets girl that has a autistic kid injected into it who manages to make the film thoroughly painful to watch.
Of course he is accepted in the end but the ride to get there is agony. There should be a few laughs in most any movie and this one has none.
Films with disabled characters are tricky sure you don't want to make fun of them, it's risky to have humor at their expense (but humor is always at someones expense, (some of) my friends are pretty bright and are continually amusing. By stripping out this upside we're left with a character who seems to do nothing more than to make every one else in the movie miserable (and those of us watching).
It''s a ham-handed movie with a surprising shortage of deftness. I wouldn't wish a profoundly autistic child on my worst enemy. It won scads of awards (autism being a bit of the cause today) but I can't see how or why. Yea lots of awards but no one went to see it, the latter which it deserved.
This review of The Black Balloon (2008) was written by Tracey W on 12 Sep 2009.
The Black Balloon has generally received positive reviews.
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