This modern vignette of small-town coming-of-age will be familiar to anyone who came to adulthood outside a major city.
We all know the cliques that became entrenched by junior high, and how they just don't interact beyond the most superficial way. Being favourably noticed by someone outside your assigned strata is as hopeless a dream as becoming an astronaut without going through training, but that doesn't stop these young people from hoping, yearning, and ultimately breaking past the longstanding boundaries to say what they mean to the people they care about, and in the process become more firmly their unique selves.
This is an understated, snowy movie with its share of mildly eccentric characters and totally understandable problems. Like a much older small-town movie, South of Wawa (1991), it tugs at a few heartstrings and tickles the odd funny bone on its way to a blowout Christmas Eve party that is sure to get some Waffle House employees in big trouble by Boxing Day.
We all know the cliques that became entrenched by junior high, and how they just don't interact beyond the most superficial way. Being favourably noticed by someone outside your assigned strata is as hopeless a dream as becoming an astronaut without going through training, but that doesn't stop these young people from hoping, yearning, and ultimately breaking past the longstanding boundaries to say what they mean to the people they care about, and in the process become more firmly their unique selves.
This is an understated, snowy movie with its share of mildly eccentric characters and totally understandable problems. Like a much older small-town movie, South of Wawa (1991), it tugs at a few heartstrings and tickles the odd funny bone on its way to a blowout Christmas Eve party that is sure to get some Waffle House employees in big trouble by Boxing Day.