REVIEW - 'Struck By Lightning'

Pic from Amazon - thanks fellas.

    

Another cherry is being popped here today in front of your very eyes as I do my first film review - eeshk.

With a cast including Rebel Wilson and Allison Janney (whose name they couldn't even spell correctly on the cover, apparently) I was expecting great things from Chris Colfer's self-penned film 'Struck By Lightening.' 

Although they say to never judge a book by its cover, it's kind of hard not to make some kind of assumption about a film and adopt some kind of 'does what it says on the tin' hope. All of the signs are there - the main character who's going to go through some kind of amazing journey, his hilarious slightly-dorky friend who's there to provide some LOLs, and the almost compulsory bitchy cheerleader. All key ingredients of a typical teen movie, right? This was not a typical teen movie, and is definitely not like what the cover suggests, although in some ways it really is...

Colfer plays slightly troubled teen Carlson, who wants to go to New York to be a journalist, but has many obstacles along the way including a divorced, depressed, and sometimes drunk mother and his fellow students who all just seem to, well, hate him and his opinionated ways. The start of the film sees Carlson get hit by lightning and die, and we then go on his journey leading up to the strike...

Without giving too much of the plot away (good luck with that Rob,) Carlson is desperate to be a journalist for The New Yorker, and has built his application up by being on the school council and more importantly being head of the writer's club. In order to be successful, however, he has to create a literary publication full of other people's stories, which is a hard job when he can barely get his writer's club to produce anything for the school newspaper. He decides to use the dirt he finds on some of the most popular people in school to blackmail them into writing things for the publication, with help from his 'best friend' Malorie (Rebel Wilson.) The term best friend is being used loosely here though, they never seem to interact anywhere out of the writer's club...

Meanwhile, his mother is a bit of mess, and is on loads of medication, and we soon find out that her pharmacist is none other than her ex-husband's new 6-month-pregnant slice, who he's engaged to. What a twist. Anyway, we follow Carlson as he tries to reach his goal, and regularly visits his dementia-suffering grandmother, who doesn't recognise him as her grandson, but reminds him of his storytelling ways. Carlson makes a decision in school which ruins his reputation, and suddenly everyone in school hates him, plus he doesn't get into the college he wanted, so he gets angry and goes to the beach...

Things happen and he starts to feel pretty damn happy, as he's reminded of everything he's achieved, and then bamn - he's hit by lightning...

Whilst the storyline was a good idea, it falls just a little flat, and the ending doesn't really go anywhere. The things you'd expect from the movie at the end, just don't happen, which I suppose makes it more realistic in some cases, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of wrapping up, which sucks. It also doesn't reflect the cover, as it feels like it would be more uplifting and funny, although it does have an awful lot of cliches and try-hard emotional moments. I've seen a lot of people liking the movie however, so it may just be and a couple of my friends...

I'll give it... 6/10