I bought this film at Blockbuster for $3.00, because it sounded interesting (a bit Ranma-esque, with the idea of someone dragging around a skeleton), because there was a cute girl in a mini-skirt on the back, and because there was a Restricted Viewing sticker on it. I thought it was going to be a sweet or at least sincere coming of age story with a weird indie edge. I was 100% wrong.
Having watched it, I have to wonder how it got the restricted sticker, since there is hardly any foul language, little violence, and the closest thing to nudity (Honestly! I don't usually go around hoping for it!) is when the girl is in her nightgown and you see her panties (you see her panties a lot in this movie, because no matter what, she's wearing a miniskirt of some sort). Even the anti-religious humor is tame (and lame, caricatured, insincere, derivative, unoriginal, and worst of all not funny in the slightest--it would be better just to listen to Ray Stevens' "Would Jesus Wear a Rolex on His Television Show"). This would barely qualify as PG-13 (it is Not Rated), but Blockbuster refuses to let anyone under the age of 17 rent this--as if it was pornographic. Any little kid could go in there and rent the edited version of Requiem for a Dream, but they insist that Zack and Reba is worse.
It is, but not in that way.
In a way, this worries me--the only thing left that could offend people is the idea of the suicide at the beginning. If anybody needs to see movies with honestly portrayed suicides (not this one, but better ones like The Virgin Suicides), it's teenagers. If both of those movies were rated R purely because of the suicide aspect, then I have little chance of turning a story I've been writing into a PG-13 movie (the main characters are eleven and a half and twelve). Suicide is one of the top three leading causes of death in teenagers (I think it's number 2), so chances are that most teens have been or will be affected by it.
Just say no to this movie, though. 2/10.
