Beach Rats (2017) Reviews

• Sensitive and Haunting

  evanston_dad2018-02-28

  I went to IMDb to see what other people had said about this film, and the very first review I saw had the title of "Boring." "Beach Rats" is quiet and thoughtful, and it demands a certain amount of patience, but it breaks my heart that someone would dismiss it as boring. It follows a lost youth navigating the no man's land between teenager and adult as he tries to figure out how to be the person he wants to be -- whoever that is -- in an environment that tells him who he should be. He hangs out with a bunch of losers who speak in a kind of dumb bro language and couldn't string together an articulate thought between the three of them while wandering aimlessly around Coney Island and its environs looking to score easy drugs. Meanwhile, he carries on a secret life of gay encounters with older men while at the same time trying to force himself to enjoy a relationship with a young woman who's too mature for him. Is he gay? Probably. Does he specifically seek out older men as father figures because his own dad just recently died of lingering cancer? Maybe. But the point is that he doesn't have the tools required to process any of the things he's feeling because he lives in a stunted place surrounded by stunted people, and it's easier to escape into feeling good the bad way than to put work into feeling better the hard way. More than anything "Beach Rats" is about how hard it is for men to explore their own feelings in a culture that has rigidly defined what it means to be masculine. Grade: A

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• A film that exploits the sadness of the closet

  Bayamon_Hill2017-11-24

  It is a little shocking to see this movie in 2017. The desperate situation that the writer/director creates for her character as entertainment is so dark and frankly, cruel, that it offends me as someone who lived/lives with that desperation. Frankie is a typical street kid from Brooklyn in many ways. He and his crew don't have much to do, so they go to Coney Island and take prescription drugs to create mild entertainment. He's atypical in that he's capable of being pleasant and respectful, when necessary. He's also gay in a world designed for straight bros, and he lives out that part of his life on a hook-up chat website. This set-up is straight from a gay 1990's movie, when the AIDS epidemic was winding down and being gay was scary - queer films reflected that back then. Like those tragic movies of yesteryear, Frankie becomes more and more isolated by his choices and actions. He finds himself alienated from his friends, his family, his straight girlfriend, his potential boyfriends and himself. And then the movie ends. The writer/director is a straight woman whose artistic decisions amount to having a character put in a glass box that is slowly filling with water just to see what happens. It's cruel. I think the problem is that as gayness is more socially acceptable as a topic for film, straight people feel empowered to tell those stories but their conception of gayness is from the 1990's. "Brokeback Mountain", "Moonlight" and "Beach Rats" are all straight people's assessments of gay life, and man are they bleak.

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• Real, but missing an "and...".

  aryugaetu2017-11-30

  Don't worry, no spoiler here: I didn't understand the ending. I understood the confusion and struggles; been there. Whatever it was, it must be hidden under some artsy symbolism. Should I have picked up on fleeting Sherlock-like clues? There were many things they could have used, I waited for them to tie things together, but it just stopped; just hung there like a gay man's rubber parts during str8 sex The plot was too drawn out and could have easily been wrapped in a bow. It was all set for the shy, non-conforming, 3rd friend to fill the gap, meeting at the carnival. Watching fireworks together would have been too cheesy, but hearing them in the background as they played with the 2 (basket)balls and scoring would have been subtle symbolism. Such an ending would have given me happy tears (rare in gay centric movies these days). Was I suppose to notice if the guy's car is still in the lot to see if he made it out? Not a spoiler because none of this happened, thus the low rating; nothing happened. It got 3 stars because we need more gay movies, but this is just 1 step above "all gays die in the end" by proving "all gays have unhappy, confusing, drug and alcohol abusing lives". That's just the plot, no spoiler ending...because there is none I could see. I'm gay (since the days it was labeled a TV freak show disease, all gays in movies were either killed or were a cheap comic relief character as "sissies"), I didn't get the ending in Beach Rats. Then again, I didn't like the ending of "Brokeback Mountain": Gay assault, brief gay sex that looks more like rape, homophobia and closets are OK if a gay man is allowed to eventually cry for a minute. Brokeback Mountain: Crappy middle, OK ending. Beach Rats: OK middle, bad ending.

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• Doesn't really go anywhere

  suse-prinas2017-11-15

  This is another one of those gay themed movies that tries to show some deeply hidden emotions or something, but instead goes nowhere. Let's start with what's good first... Most of the cinematography is pretty good - expect for overly shaky camera in few scenes. There is a lot of eye candy in terms of shirtless guys and more - can help in making the movie at least a bit more interesting. And the acting isn't totally bad. At least the actors don't feel stiff. Sadly that is where good things end. There is little dialogue in the movie, though that is not always a bad thing. But in this movie it actually is. Because we don't really see any character development and no real story. We have a young guy that takes drugs, has sex with older men and spends time with his friends doing stupid things. That's almost the entire story. Backing characters have no names, no personality and really don't do anything. Main character... pretty much the same. No ambitions, no desires, no anger, nothing. He just is. Pretty much the whole thing can be seen in the trailer. You will get the same story if you look at pictures of random strangers in a city near a beach. Though those will probably have more depth. Overall I can't really recommend this one. If you want teens coming to terms with life and their sexuality go watch something like Hidden Kisses or Boys and leave this one alone.

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• A small slice of white working class in Brooklyn without hope

  jakob132017-08-27

  'Beach Rats' has received positive reviews.Is it worthy of them? Eliza Hit-man's 'Beach Rats' protagonist Frankie has nothing going for him. In a way, he's 'Saturday Night Fever's' Tony Manero of the 21 century. Like Tony he lives with his family, but unlike him, he doesn't work; he's listless. Unlike Tony who has no future other than working in a local paint shop,but lives for the weekends dancing; on the other hand, Frankie is a sixes and sevens, trolling the web for trysts with older men for sex. Unlike Tony who is sure of his sexuality (he adjusts his junk before a mirror before going off to a discotheque). Frankie fears his homosexuality. (Older men don't live in Frankie's world, so it is a 'condom' to protect his doubts and secrets._ Hit-man has created a closed world of the white working class in Gravesend or Sheepshead in the wake of 9/ll and the 2008 world recession. It is a bleak world,a world that for Frankie and his friends with boundaries that end in Coney Island or the bushes of the Belt Parkway where Frankie has sex. A closed in world with no exit: Frankie hangs with three friends, who, like him, are more teenagers than adults. We know little about them, other than Frankie supplies them with marijuana and his dying father's pain killers to dull the pain cancer causes. Frankie is in his own world;he lives in the basement with his computer he uses to find men... They play handball, a sport that once was an important sport in Brooklyn, but no more. And they congregate in a smoke shop, and live for the weekend at Coney Island, seeing the same fireworks week after week, ogling girls, going on rides and getting stoned. Frankie hooks up with Simone a salesgirl with no future too.She chooses Frankie because he's sexy and more pretty than handsome. Frankie's a cynic of sorts; he asks here if she had sex with another girl; she had which she characterizes as 'hot'; he then asks her what about two men who have sex; her reply is a curt..they're gay. Even sex with her remains a last resort, as his sense of self walks on the edge' Frankie is becomes more an outsider as he retreats into self doubt and afraid to come to terms with who he is. Frankie and his friends will stoop to pickpocket on the boardwalk to pay for a weekend of fun, drugs and feel 'strong' and manly, not aimless and lost. Ultimately Frankie lets his friends in his secret as a way to get 'weed'. The victim is beaten and left in the Atlantic to fend for himself. And he seeks respite on the boardwalk of Coney Island, alone and no more sure of who he is... As a sociological statement, 'Beach Rat' is worth seeing. As a film, it has the feel of a graduate school exercise. Coney Island is wonderfully photographed, but Brooklyn remains elusive as does Frankie.

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