Oh, Ben Affleck has a gangster film called Live by Night coming out? Great! Like I haven’t seen drunken and horny white people who wear fedoras shoot each other over money before. Oh, Octavia Spencer has a new movie coming out called Hidden Figures? Amazing! Let me guess, there’s black people who are really smart but they don’t get the chance to prove it because of racism. Oh, there’s a movie called Lion where a little Indian boy gets lost? I guarantee you he finds inspiration and somehow locates his parents through the power of a Bollywood game show! Thank goodness there’s not a movie out about the Holocaust or a transgender operation right now because if there was, my site would be shut down by 8 am tomorrow morning!
Now those of you who actually know me, know that I’m purposely being a jerk to prove a point. For those who don’t know me, trust me, these aren’t really my thoughts! I know that these are all important stories that need to be told (with the obvious exception of Live by Night) so we don’t ever forget our past and the horrible mistakes we’ve made; but please, just space them out a little bit more throughout the year. How else am I going to enjoy what is easily the best month ever for action films? Think about it! This month alone is providing us the final chapters of Underworld and Resident Evil as well as The Return of Xander Cage! And if that wasn’t enough, they even threw in a Jamie Foxx revenge film to boot! My head is literally exploding just thinking about it! But alas, I also have to check out the Oscar bait just so I can properly hate on them when the end of February rolls around. Well without further ado, here are my thoughts on Lion.
I won’t lie, part of me really did feel as though I already knew how this film was going to go when I walked into the theater, and I’m sad to say that it turns out I was right. Now the first half of Lion is actually pretty entertaining as you instantly fall in love with young Saroo (Sunny Pawar). If you were lucky enough to grow up with an older sibling, then Saroo reminds you of your childhood when you said and did anything you could to hang out with them. Saroo was clearly too young to be out hustling with his older brother Guddu to help bring food back home to their family but there’s something about brotherly love that keeps you from using logic.
The two of them would do dangerous things like stealing coal off of a moving train or go looking for work in the middle of the night. Well one night, Guddu leaves a sleepy and cranky Saroo on the train platform by himself while he goes off to look for work. And seeing as how he’s a 5 year old, Saroo naturally wakes up in the middle of the night frightened and immediately starts looking for his brother. He somehow winds up on a passenger train while trying to find Guddu but eventually gets tired and takes a nap; only to wake up in the morning to find himself on what is now a moving train. 16,000 km later, a 5 year old Saroo finds himself on the other side of India, a place where they speak an entirely different language. Now at this point of the film, every current parent or future parent is absolutely losing their minds in the theater! You can’t help but be terrified for the little kid. And it doesn’t help that while he is lost, you are exposed to the dark side of this otherwise great country. This first half of this film is unbelievably spectacular.
But then, the second half starts and everything that made this film so great is completely lost. This is where you meet the adult version of Saroo. After being adopted by Australian parents, he seems to be well adjusted to his new life, that is until one night when he comes across something that reminds him of his early childhood. And from that point on, you’re stuck with scene after boring scene of a listless and seemingly lost (again) Saroo. Now don’t get me wrong, I get that he’s supposed to feel that way after being separated from his natural family; I’m just saying that the storytelling could have been a lot more engaging. The only somewhat interesting thing that happened in the second half was the subplot involving his maladjusted and fellow adopted new brother Rawa. But every time they touched on that story, you’d get an awful tale from Nicole Kidman about how she knew she was destined for greatness when she dreamt about a brown boy standing by her side. Oooooooook.
But whatever, she should be nominated for an Oscar for that awesome perm she had in the film. Overall I guess this movie was good but there’s no way it gets a rating of more than barely FRESH!
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