It's impossible to write a meaningful review of this movie without revealing the surprise ending. Anybody who leaves out the last 20 minutes is giving an unbalanced review that will leave many viewers feeling angry and betrayed if they see the movie based on that review. This is one of the three huge flaws in the movie, which I will elaborate below.
SPOILER ALERT: PROCEED ONLY IF YOU ALREADY KNOW OR WANT TO KNOW HOW THIS MOVIE ENDS.
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That's its first big flaw. This movie forces a conscientious reviewer to reveal the ending because it presents itself dishonestly as a gently romantic and sensitive character study when it's really a thriller. The ending betrays a viewer who has fallen under its sensitive, romantic spell with a shocking twist at the end. That is certainly a novel approach in movie-making, but it's also mean-spirited - almost as bad as secretly rewriting Winnie-the-Pooh so that it ends with Christopher Robin being gang-raped, but not warning parents before they read the book to their children.
This is as good a place as any to deal with the often-repeated excuse "But it's a true story!", because that's a lie. Even if the Davy Rothbart story the movie is based on is completely true (and there's good reason to doubt that), this movie distorts his story. (You can still read it on the GQ website, as I did; it's a badly-written and annoying story, by the way - hardly worth making into a movie.)
In the story, Davy had already suspected that "Nicole" might be a man, but he was having fun so he kept playing the phone-sex game. He was savvy and worldly, not at all the totally clueless, paralyzingly shy man the Davy in the movie is. It is unforgivable for the movie to create such a helpless, hopeless, rawly vulnerable character and then rip his slowly emerging, microscopic hopes to shreds the way this horrible movie does.
That's its second big flaw. It creates a preternaturally innocent, naive and vulnerable protagonist and then brutalizes him for entertainment.
The third, and to me the most unforgivable, flaw in this offensive movie is that the horror at the end of the tunnel is the fact that "Nicole" is really a gay man. Aaron is a man almost as shy and vulnerable as Davy is, but he's as unattractive as Davy is adorable. Davy is enormously appealing in his innocence and his sweet vulnerability - but Aaron is just a sleazy, lying, slimy creep.
Being gay is wonderful. I love it. I wouldn't be straight if you gave me a billion dollars. So having the monster who suddenly punches you in the gut at the end of a "heartwarming" movie be a gay man is deeply insulting. And then to have him be a creep, a pervert, a disgusting loser - in sharp contrast to Davy's charming, heartwarming (and straight!) loser - makes the insult even more appalling.
I cannot imagine what kind of person likes this movie. Certainly not any gay person; or any shy person, gay or straight; or anyone who cares about shy or gay people. The only audience I can imagine for this movie is severely abused women serving life sentences for murdering their abusers. They might be able to identify with the Davy this movie creates and then savages for entertainment by revealing that his secret love is a gay creep.
Don't blame it on Rothbart's story, as dumb and offensive as that story is; blame it on Alvarez's movie, which is far worse.
SPOILER ALERT: PROCEED ONLY IF YOU ALREADY KNOW OR WANT TO KNOW HOW THIS MOVIE ENDS.
-------------
That's its first big flaw. This movie forces a conscientious reviewer to reveal the ending because it presents itself dishonestly as a gently romantic and sensitive character study when it's really a thriller. The ending betrays a viewer who has fallen under its sensitive, romantic spell with a shocking twist at the end. That is certainly a novel approach in movie-making, but it's also mean-spirited - almost as bad as secretly rewriting Winnie-the-Pooh so that it ends with Christopher Robin being gang-raped, but not warning parents before they read the book to their children.
This is as good a place as any to deal with the often-repeated excuse "But it's a true story!", because that's a lie. Even if the Davy Rothbart story the movie is based on is completely true (and there's good reason to doubt that), this movie distorts his story. (You can still read it on the GQ website, as I did; it's a badly-written and annoying story, by the way - hardly worth making into a movie.)
In the story, Davy had already suspected that "Nicole" might be a man, but he was having fun so he kept playing the phone-sex game. He was savvy and worldly, not at all the totally clueless, paralyzingly shy man the Davy in the movie is. It is unforgivable for the movie to create such a helpless, hopeless, rawly vulnerable character and then rip his slowly emerging, microscopic hopes to shreds the way this horrible movie does.
That's its second big flaw. It creates a preternaturally innocent, naive and vulnerable protagonist and then brutalizes him for entertainment.
The third, and to me the most unforgivable, flaw in this offensive movie is that the horror at the end of the tunnel is the fact that "Nicole" is really a gay man. Aaron is a man almost as shy and vulnerable as Davy is, but he's as unattractive as Davy is adorable. Davy is enormously appealing in his innocence and his sweet vulnerability - but Aaron is just a sleazy, lying, slimy creep.
Being gay is wonderful. I love it. I wouldn't be straight if you gave me a billion dollars. So having the monster who suddenly punches you in the gut at the end of a "heartwarming" movie be a gay man is deeply insulting. And then to have him be a creep, a pervert, a disgusting loser - in sharp contrast to Davy's charming, heartwarming (and straight!) loser - makes the insult even more appalling.
I cannot imagine what kind of person likes this movie. Certainly not any gay person; or any shy person, gay or straight; or anyone who cares about shy or gay people. The only audience I can imagine for this movie is severely abused women serving life sentences for murdering their abusers. They might be able to identify with the Davy this movie creates and then savages for entertainment by revealing that his secret love is a gay creep.
Don't blame it on Rothbart's story, as dumb and offensive as that story is; blame it on Alvarez's movie, which is far worse.