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Mean Creek (2004)

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4 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

One of six kids en route to a boat trip, pudgy young bully George (Josh Peck) describes his dyslexia as the sort of genetic quirk crucial to evolution: ‘maybe I’m a superior being, the future of the race.’ It’s a moment of dramatic irony – the whole trip is mere pretext for a prank at George’s expense, set up by Rocky (Trevor Morgan) as misjudged retribution for George’s pummelling of his placid young bro Sam (Rory Culkin) – but it hints at the survival-of-the-fittest dynamic that underpins these adolescents’ incessant rough-housing. George is only halfway up a pecking order in which jabs and flinches define even the friendliest exchanges and morality evolves through messy trial and error. (As in such recent thematic precedents as ‘Bully’ and ‘Elephant’, adults are vague, distant and inconsequential.)
Thanks to a terrific turn from Peck, George proves disarmingly well-rounded as well as rotund, beams of wit and amiability alternating with clouds of arrogance and aggression; he charms the gang out of vengefulness before taunting them back into it. At bottom, he’s a sad, lonely kid – a fact illustrated by his keeping a video diary, whose form is mirrored in the home-movie feel cultivated by debut director Jacob Aaron Estes’ use of handheld photography and natural light. In the pivotal central sequence, the simmering aggression and emotional flux of the cramped boat is unnervingly offset by the tranquil, sun-dappled Oregon waterways and lulling score. At barely 80 minutes, ‘Mean Creek’ offers a similarly discomfiting, contained intimacy, wringing emotional and ethical tension from a set-up as simple, loaded and risky as a dare.

Author: BW

Time Out London Issue 1810: April 27-May 04 2005

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User reviews of this film

gojirasan said...

Posted on Oct 19 2010 08:03 In the U.S. we used to have these television movies in the afternoon called "afterschool specials", which tried to teach children some kind of moral lesson. This film is like that. The theme seems to be something along the lines of: if your friend breaks the law in any way you should go to the police immediately and rat him out. It's like some kind of pro law enforcement propaganda. It's a portrait of a group of kids with no moral compass of their own. Right is whatever their society says is right. Let the authorities make that decision. That seems to be the message.
This is the movie:
1. Kid gets pushed out of row boat on a river.
2. Kid hits his head and drowns.
3. The rest of the kids go to the police like good little citizens ratting out their friend.
Tiresome propaganda. And I have to disagree about Josh Peck being a good actor. I didn't find his character particularly convincing. In fact none of the characters were.

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yduric said...

Posted on Jul 04 2009 01:29 Second review and re-rating of the film. I had actually completely forgotten about my first hateful comment. The truth is, I have re-watched 'Mean Creek' twice since, and come to a very different conclusion: the film is in fact very well constructed: it is very ambiguous and character development in particular is very well done. I think that 'Don't play with fire' would be a good sentence to summarize it, 'fire' meaning here human emotions and wounds, and the entire sentence referring, of course, to the degenerate fatass of a bully in the film.

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Jackson Harvey said...

Posted on Jul 02 2009 18:29 Are you kidding me can't you tell in the movie the character has definite mental issues that obviously have not been shown professional attention due to the small town-like setting which obviously isn't as resourced as a city town would, your comment shows the reviews should be for people who actually watch the film. As for the movie itself it scares you in a way no horror film ever would(i will take that back when i see a film that does) and once you have watched for longer than about half an hour it sucks you in like a mental draw that wont go away. This is surprising because it has a simple story that is so solid you don't need any special twist ending or big climax and the long silences are so eerie you just want to shout to break the silence. 10/10

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yduric said...

Posted on Sep 15 2008 00:37 A total piece of shit, this one. Whereas 'Bully' described a premeditated murder of a definite psychopath in a quite detached and non-judgmental way - Larry Clark did neither try to arouse sympathy for the bully nor for his victims who finally killed him- 'Mean Creek' is terribly preachy, because it definitely tries to arouse sympathy for a degenerate fatass of a bully, who beats innocent kids, even using a BASEBALL BAT for NO reason, and says AWFUL things just for the mere pleasure of hurting- in short, a rising or even confirmed psychopath, and to make monsters of a bunch of kids who initially just want to humiliate him, and NOT to kill him: his death is accidental. But Jacob Aaron Estes does not care, he doesn't even give these kids a single chance. I'm sorry, but I think that this piece of shit of a bully somehow provoked what happened to him, and I will NEVER have sympathy for such despicable characters.

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