Eighteen (2005 Canada)

The Gist:

Young Pip has run away from home after an incident involving his father and brother. As he tries to survive on the streets he listens to his eighteenth birthday gift from his grandfather, an audiotape where his grandfather describes his own eighteenth birthday as a British soldier in World War Two.  

Comments (with no real spoilers):

First off, despite being included in lists of "gay" movies, it isn't really a "gay flick." While it does have gay characters and some subplots are driven by homophobia (and astonishingly bad parenting), the two leads are straight. Which means the actual gays are minor characters and the focus of the movie is to parallel hetero Pip life as a homeless runaway against that of his hetero grandfather trying to survive the war.

I looked around for reviews of the movie and didn't find many professional reviews, but I did find lots of regular people gushing over it, loving this movie to death. I didn't. Which is not to say it's bad. Parts of it are good and while there are some problems here, it at least tries. More so it attempts to be ambitious, which frankly is not too common. 

One of my issues is of simple suspension of disbelief. Basically, while he more or less does a good job with the role, the idea that the actor playing Pip is just barely eighteen pushes credibility beyond the breaking point. Even characters on a TV show where young thirty-somethings play high school kids would look at him and wonder what the heck was going on. As is the guy playing hustler Clark is also far too old for his role. 

The other issues I have are a bit subjective. The movie is too soap opera melodramatic for my taste and there is a lot of story / points to cover crammed into its running time, so some if not most things don't get quite enough time to be dealt with properly. 

Women:
Yes

People of color:
One scene has one guy with a couple of lines

Gratuitous nudity:
I saw the movie last week and have already forgotten if there was any nudity, so um, maybe? 

• Director: Richard Bell 
• Writer: Richard Bell
• Actors: Paul Anthony, Brendan Fletcher, Ian McKellen (voice only), Alan Cumming
• 106 min
• IMDB