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A KID LIKE JAKE
Director: Silas Howard Cast: Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, Octavia Spencer, Priyanka Chopra, Ann Dowd, Amy Landecker, Leo James Davis MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:32 Release Date: 6/1/18 (limited); 6/22/18 (wider) |
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Capsule review by Mark Dujsik | June 21, 2018 A Kid Like Jake dances around its central subject. That's partly because the characters either don't want to or don't know how to discuss the eponymous kid, a young boy who doesn't conform to the gender norms of society. The drama is in that inability or unwillingness to address what's happening to the kid, how or if they should approach the topic, and what it means for his future. In keeping their thoughts and concerns close to the chest, though, the main characters spend the entirety of the movie dodging anything of interest. Those characters are the boy's parents, Alex (Claire Danes) and Greg Wheeler (Jim Parsons). They're trying to get Jake (Leo James Davis) into a kindergarten, and decent portion of the early conflict has to do with the tests, the politicking, and the financial concerns of putting a child in a good school. Meanwhile, Jake is showing more and more interest in things that would traditionally be called interests for young girls, such as princesses. The screenplay by Daniel Pearle comes from the screenwriter's own play, and so, too, do the movie's limitations. For one thing, Jake is regularly talked about but never actually heard. It's more than a little disconcerting to have this child's fate discussed directly or indirectly without any feedback from the boy himself. Instead, Alex, Greg, and an assortment of other characters speculate about his feelings, his identity, and what he might want, but no one, apparently, thinks to just ask the kid. The drama, then, is all about the parents' mounting anxiety, with Alex, who discovers that she's pregnant, growing increasingly distressed and Greg trying to be supportive of what he imagines to be conflicting interests—between what his wife wants of her child and what his son might be. The voice of reason comes from Jake's pre-school principal, played by the unflinchingly reliable Octavia Spencer, who seems like the only character here who genuinely does care about Jake in a selfless way. The result is a movie that tries to bypass the specifics of an inherently social and political scenario by focusing on the specifics of its characters. A Kid Like Jake, though, evades its central topic so much that even its characters seem unsure of what to talk about and how to talk about it. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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