Am I Missing Something?

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Alexa Walker (Emmy Rossum) is a stressed-out high school drama geek. To her dismay, she's paired up with jock Johnny Drake (Zach Gilford) who doesn't care about their acting assignment. Even worst, former student and star actor Grant Matson (Alan Cumming) is impressed with him rather than her. She spirals downwards and ends up in detention with Johnny. She goes to her friend Courtney (Rooney Mara)'s party and has sex with Johnny. Her best friend Ben Berger (Ashley Springer) gets jealous. This becomes a series of sexual experimentations.The structure of this movie is divided in three. The first part follows Alexa, the second part follows Ben, and the third part follows Johnny. It leaves the flow disjointed and the emotions disconnected. Alexa's part is standard high school drama. I really like her scene with Cumming. The Ben part is uncertain. By the time it's Johnny's part, I am lost emotionally with Alexa. The three leads are relatively good. Gilford puts up the most compelling performance. This film has an awkward, uncertain tone that keeps it from finding its feet.

This is a solid film I assumed was going to be a lame teen relationship flick but it turns into a somewhat clever unorthodox relationship flick that happens to utilize teens. Its broken into three parts where each part focuses on one of the three main characters. I liked that aspect of the film because it allowed us to get into the mind of each character pretty well and understand their turmoils and motivations. But the problem is once you're done with one character that character then becomes less deep which rubbed me the wrong way. You have a window into the emotional turmoil going on in Alexa that would allow her to use Johnny the way she does only to have her character fade to a somewhat two dimensional "girlfriend" character which basically acts as a foil to Johnny in his (and the last) bit. Ben fairs even worse I think going from the apparent nerd best friend of Alexa who we assume is secretly longing for her only to be thrown a twist (which was well done in my opinion) that he has actually been longing for Johnny not Alexa. But then once his chapter is done he becomes this terrible aggressive horn dog who only wants to get in Johnnys pants and he loses all the emotional turbulence and likability he had developed during Alexa's and his chapters. Yuck. What a way to ruin a character...I definitely enjoyed the bagel/banana scene but was unsure what we were supposed to think of Bens mom. Was she fancying Johnny? Was she just there to deliver a metaphor? You think its going somewhere then nothing comes of it. Also didn't like Courtney's character. She seemed a decent enough foil for Alexa at first but she devolves into this weird sad lush at the end whose sole purpose is to host the party where everything falls apart. And what was with that party anyway? Were they purposefully doing things to mess with Johnnys head? Why? Although both characters (Alexa and Ben) come off as selfish in their motives I didn't see them as nefarious or sinister or purposefully wanting to hurt him. Yet that whole scene had the feel of a purposefully planned torture session for Johnny. And we cant totally feel sorry for Johnny either. He gets used but his motivation is ultimately selfish as well. He wants a connection so desperately that he's willing to believe an impossible three headed relationship could actually work out for everyone and is devastated when it becomes clear that no... it cant...All in all its worth watching despite some plot holes and inconsistencies. I wish they could have figured out a way to keep the characters developed after their chapters were done but thats probably a real trick, understandably so.

I wouldn't call this a typical teen angst movie. It has some interesting twists and a surprising bit of innocence that you wouldn't guess from the trailers and descriptions.Zach Gilford, Ashley Springer and Ana Gasteyer were the highlights of the film for me. (I'm not normally a fan of Ana's work, but I liked her in this.)Warning, the rest is a potential Spoiler... Alan Cumming's role is quite short, but his his character's words perhaps explain more about the actual story than anyone else's. If you watch the movie and find yourself scratching your head when the end credits roll, go back and watch his scenes. How is a great actor created? Do life lessons that just happen to you naturally because of who you are have a bigger impact on your life than ones you unnaturally try to force to occur? I think those questions play a big part in how the characters end up. Overall I think it's a good movie, a bit more complicated than some, no easy answers or simple conclusion. If you're the kind of person who tries hard to present yourself as something that you're not, you may appreciate this movie more than others.

Dare was a genuinely surprising film. Having seen the short years ago at a gay film fest I thought that I knew what the story would be about and I was fully prepared to be disappointed that the feature wasn't as good as the short. Boy was I wrong! The film took me places I didn't expect and left me with images and ideas that I'll remember for a long time. There were likable, realistic characters that I genuinely cared about and a well written feature-length storyline that neatly incorporated the short that preceded it.There were spots where the film showed its indie-film roots but, for the most part, the scenes were studio grade. The dialog was mostly well written, the actors knew their craft, and the director succeeded in bringing all of the filmic elements together better than most works of this kind. The overall tenor of the film was moderately light-hearted considering the subject matter and does a nice job of balancing the problems of high-school life with its promise.Zach Gilford did a great job and turned a character that I thought of as a bit of a cad in the short into a sympathetic waif.This is NOT a major studio release and if you go into it looking for that you'll be disappointed but if you'd like to see a nice small movie that treats issues of being gay in high-school as just one issue that today's youth deal with, then this may be the film for you.