Review of The Florida Project (2017) by T N — 16 Nov 2017

The Florida Project gives you more than an hour of a bunch of delightful/nasty kids living at the edges of society running around and generally getting into mostly harmless business. One of kids has a grown-up version of her bratty but engaging self for a mother. The film goes on without a seeming plot in auteur fashion that we are supposed to take for art. When the final and inevitable blow comes, it's presented as a nothing but inevitable, and we are left with pretty much nothing. The filmmaker is equally sympathetic and critical of the mother, but without giving her a single redeeming quality we see the end as the only possible one.

Yet, if you are a mother who lost a child, or a child who lost a mother, the final scene will stir up primal pain even if you are angry with the filmmaker for wasting your time for the last hour and most of the movie.

Way too much time is spent filming child characters running around just for the hell of it. Aren't they cute? If home videos about life's misfortunate castoffs if your thing, this might be for you. Otherwise, avoid.