Beach Rats (*1/2)

BEACH RATS is a movie that seeks artistry but has nothing to offer. It's like a painter trying to get a work hung in a museum by framing the tour book. There's nothing to it. Many have praised this as a film full of brutality, honesty, chemistry, and the like. I found it to be a vapid exercise in style over substance. And boy, did this story need substance.

The movie plots along following a young adult named Frankie (actually a remarkable performance by Brit Harris Dickinson) who maneuvers life in Brooklyn while coming to terms with his sexuality. Right away we are told he is gay, stuck in a predicament between hanging out with his "bros" and fulfilling a sexual desire that all the prettiest girls cannot give him. He meets one such girl in the film's opening, a stale exchange of words beneath summertime fireworks. The two go back to his place, nothing happens, and then she leaves upset that such a handsome boy could turn out to be such a "jerk." In his attempts to hide his sexuality, he also comes across as a bit of a prude.

And so the film goes, scene by scene, teasing the audience with ideas of a great movie out there somewhere, and I kept asking out loud "is anything going to happen?" Right up until the credits began to roll, I found myself lost as to this film's ultimate meaning. I suppose it's about coming to terms with one's sexuality, although last year's Moonlight was so much more beautiful and inspired. It could also be about a boy's challenge to overcome a drug addiction (a heavy topic in the latter half of this picture). Where there might have been a message, instead we are stuck with confusing editing, lack of motivation, and lack of characters.

Even the presentation of this film is confusing to the audience. We sort of learn that Frankie lives in Brooklyn, and yet not once are we shown an establishing shot of where he lives, his neighborhood, his community... I recently saw the original "Taking of Pelham One Two Three" in which the city of New York plays as much a character as any of the lead stars. The buildings, the urban chaos, the sounds... Here, I rarely understood the setting at all, since the majority of the movie seems to function under a weak assumption that the audience knows New York and Jersey inside and out. Does Frankie live in a "good" or "bad" part of town? Your guess is as good as any. He certainly has a good mother, progressive and accepting of her children's dreams and hopes. What is her ultimate character goal? I don't think she has one.

I was reminded a lot of Blue Is the Warmest Color, another LGBT movie that was critically praised and yet I found almost offensive by the way it presented sex scenes with a brutal honesty and focus on graphic details. Does this movie benefit by dwelling so much on our lead actor's torso and waist? As much as he is meant to be an "attractive" character, the film turns into a nearly pornographic display of flesh at periodic intervals, filmed in long takes with bright lights. The movie stops being a story about a young boy growing up and instead becomes a filmmaker's fascination with voyeurism as a past time. Some might appreciate this film for it's slow, drawn out, pointless scenes that contribute nothing towards an advancing plot.

I'm of the mindset that if nothing happens in the first 10 minutes of a movie, then chances are that nothing will happen at all in the film. Case in point: Beach Rats. This movie is completely without purpose. A movie about actual rats living on an Atlantic beach would have proven to be a much more entertaining subject.