Movies From the Hat VI #54 – Ashleigh’s Pick – Jasper Jones (2017)

This is my 3491st Review

Thanks to Ashleigh of The Movie Oracle for this recommendation.

“I don’t know, but screaming at him isn’t gonna reinforce the point.” – Wes

Number of Times Seen – 1 (6 Nov 2017)

Brief Synopsis – A young boy living in rural Australia is confronted by questions when a friend of his brings him to an abandoned area to show him the body of a dead girl.

My Take on it – When I heard that this film was considered a modern version of To Kill A Mockingbird, I assumed that this film would take me to extraordinary places.

Unfortunately, the storyline here isn’t as powerful as the one in Mockingbird and doesn’t manage to keep the viewer engrossed for the entire film.

The characters themselves seem too plain and none of the them are very memorable which leads the viewer to not care about them so much.

The storyline is completely overloaded with sub plots which instead of enriching the film actually draws it down.

They try way too hard to weave as many storylines as possible into one film, but it all feels overloaded in the end which takes away from some of the effectiveness of this film.

Instead, the viewer feels more like they are watching a soap opera because it’s so unbelievable and unrealistic that so many social and racial issues can be piled up like this in one small film.

Bottom Line – The story isn’t as engrossing as I would have hoped.  The characters are not very memorable and the storyline is overloaded which makes it all feel too overwhelming for one story.  I can definitely see why this has been compared to Mockingbird (see Trivia below) but it doesn’t come anywhere close to being as effective.  This film tries to weave so many great ideas into one storyline but ultimately it doesn’t manage to accomplish what it set out to do since it ends up seeming too soap-operapy instead of realistic.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Jasper Jones is often considered an “Australian To Kill a Mockingbird” due to its prejudices on racism similar to those in Harper Lee’s hit novel.  (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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