THE PLOT THUS FAR
A pregnant teenager flees her abusive mother in search of her father, only to be rejected by her dad and forced to survive on the streets until a compassionate stranger offers a hopeful alternative.
WHAT WE THOUGHT
“Gimme Shelter” is “Precious” sans the fat minorities. It’s a TV-movie without any charm and wastes an excellent cast. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you get the bulk of the film. The main character has a mean mom and she needs to find a sense of community out in the ghetto wild. Naturally, it’s not long before Vanessa Hudgens learns that life is rough, but she gonna have that baby anyways. Laughter inducing moments happens at the worse moments, but it is what it is.
Brendan Fraser does his best to play it straight, but he seems setup to fail. The same goes for Rosario Dawson, as she tries to channel a mix of Joan Crawford and Monique. While that sounds funny on paper, the end result is horrifying in a way that can be described as a pill popping Drag Queen’s nightmare. Then, there’s James Earl Jones. Poor Mufasa is left to try and bring gravitas to something that’s not worthy of his time.
Judging by our contest turn-out for this movie, most of the readers hold this film in the same regard. It’s nice to see that while films like this can be made, the movie-going audience still wants them to be good. Message pictures get tied up so much in their wording that they step on their hands trying to create something long-lasting. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter as the general malaise of moviegoers will cause the best to rise the top. The top being that separate layer that doesn’t include cinematic blockbusters, sequels and kids’ movies that continue to dominate the Cineplex. If you want to watch a well-meaning melodrama, then move to another decade and leave this one to the studio machine.
The Blu-Ray comes with a featurette, Digital HD copy and deleted scenes as the special features. The DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track is supportive enough. The same can be said for the 1080p transfer. However, it’s not something that’s going to blow you out the back of your home theater. In the end, I’d recommend a rental.
RELEASE DATE: 04/29/2014