Quote:
Originally Posted by Simply Red
watching American Animals.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bowser
How'd you like it?
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I'll answer to say it is a minor but competent film.
Its one innovative conceit is retelling a mostly true story, dramatized with competent actors, and with the narrative punctuated by accounts from the real people in the originating story.
It has a pretty darn decent soundtrack that lends it propulsion, atmosphere and emotion.
But the origin story doesn't reveal a whole lot new for fact or fiction. Bored teens plan for the theft of valuable library books that they deem under minimal security. They take their planning cues from modern heist movies. But the difficulties they run into are more pedestrian and emotional than the slick stories on the big screen, and they make a royal mess of it.
There is some value in the counterposition of the debasing and soul-crushing reality of criminality with the daydream adventure of it. I won't say more than that to avoid ruining what I took to be the emotional heart of the film.