Verdict
Summary
Designed to be a cult film with its garish colors, weird, comic book-style scripting and lighting, and a just plain bizarre approach to comedy, The Loneliest Boy in the World vaguely reminded me of Cemetery Man, another macabre movie that dealt with similar themes, but with its completely-out-of-reality textures it will certainly appeal to the Millennial Tim Burton crowd, if no one else.
Plot:
After his parents die, an awkward teenager is ordered by the court to make friends, which sends him to the graveyard … to dig up people he thinks will make great buddies.
Review:
Oliver (Max Harwood) might be the weirdest, most socially awkward person on earth. He accidentally killed his overly doting mother in a bizarre, easy-to-avoid mishap involving a Jacuzzi, a floatie, electricity, and a garden gnome, and since he’s not yet 18, the court orders him to make friends or be put in the state’s care after he spends some time in a psychiatric ward. Not knowing how to adjust or move on, Oliver gets a crazy idea to dig up some recently deceased corpses from the cemetery and make buddies with the dead because … well, just because. At first, his new friends – a popular jock who “made friends with everyone,” a little girl, a jovial black lady, and a beer-swigging dad, all of whom were killed in a recent plane crash – are all just lifeless rotting corpses hanging out on his couch, but somehow they come alive in Oliver’s imagination (or is it much more than that?) and keep him company and miraculously convince the court-appointed social workers that Oliver is indeed adjusting and adapting. But clearly, Oliver’s new friends won’t last forever as they’re rapidly deteriorating, and with some town bullies out to “get” Oliver, he just might need the extra help to boost his confidence.
Designed to be a cult film with its garish colors, weird, comic book-style scripting and lighting, and a just plain bizarre approach to comedy, The Loneliest Boy in the World vaguely reminded me of Cemetery Man, another macabre movie that dealt with similar themes, but with its completely-out-of-reality textures it will certainly appeal to the Millennial Tim Burton crowd, if no one else. I was engaged to a point, but it’s just so strange and hard to access the main character’s humanity. Even Edward Scissorhands is more relatable than Oliver. There’s an audience for this, and I might’ve been it at one point in my younger years, but I had a difficult time riding this train at this stage of my life. From director Martin Owen.
Well Go USA just released The Loneliest Boy in the World on DVD and Blu-ray, and the disc comes with a behind the scenes feature, plus the trailer.
