Genre Guesstimation – Lean on Pete (2017)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s genre has been chosen by Sally of 18 Cinema Lane and we will be reviewing our favorite Youth-Led Movies.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Jan by sending them to youthfulsally@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Sally!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Youth-Led Movies..…

“The best women… have all been waitresses at some point.” – Ray

Number of Times Seen – 1 (13 Jan 2020)

Brief Synopsis – A young man gets a job caring for a horse and it changes his life and his outlook on the world.

My Take on it – I decided that in order to make my guest choices of the Genre for the Genre Grandeur series more personal (and expand my own personal horizons of these genres), I will take a recommendation from my guest for a film to watch for this Genre Guesstimation series.

This movie was Sally’s choice for me to watch.

This is a film that I had never heard of before Sally suggested that I watch it and was quite interested in seeing what it was all about based solely on the unique sounding title.

The film’s premise is actually an intriguing one that is able to move in some powerful directions along the way.

They are able to present things quite well yet the path of this character’s journey is handled a bit too poorly.

The film has way too many scenes that drag along at a snail’s pace and fail to keep the film’s momentum moving in the right direction.

This obviously hurts things more than helps them.

The film actually has a great cats led by Charlie Plummer.

He does a fine job in the lead role and his performance is helped along by some great supporting turns by Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny and Steve Zahn.

The film has some nice twists and turns along the way that help move things in some unexpected directions which helps make things more intriguing to watch unfold.

This is a movie based on a novel and I assume that the book does a much better job describing the character’s feelings and decision making process which doesn’t come across powerfully enough on screen which is somewhat of a shame.

Bottom Line – Interesting premise that moves in some very intriguing directions. The story is told in a nice way yet the journey of this character isn’t presented well enough. There are a few too many scenes that drag along too much and that hurts things a bit. The cast of this film is extremely talented and despite the film largely following the path that Plummer’s character, the supporting characters all give us some meaty parts to savor. The story has a few nice twists and turns that helps keep things more intriguing as things move along. This movie is based on a book and I assume that the novel is able to describe and explain things in a much more succinct and interesting way which is quite a shame.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Chloë Sevigny revealed that she was originally approached to play Charley’s aunt, but her agent fought for her to play Bonnie because the latter character is a larger role with “more [for Sevigny] to sink her teeth into.” (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not really. The story is good, but there are too many points along this character’s journey that move along too slowly and it takes away from things.

Rating – Globe Worthy (7/10)

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