Desert Blue

Nostalgia got me on this one. I was 14 when it came out and it was everything I was about back then. It spoke directly to my teen angst. Takes me right back, everytime I watch it. It might not be the best film ever made but I really like it. For me it's an 8/10 but I'm biased and realistically, I know it's more of a 6/10.

This film was much better than I was expecting and much better than most Quirky films with a youthful cast. Sexton, Ricci and Hudson are all really great. John Heard is adorable as the shaggy pop culture prof. Really a nifty little film!

Desert Blue is a very simple story of a spoiled Hollywood actress who, along with her dad (the impressive John Heard) gets stuck in a tiny town whose only pride comes from having the 'World's Largest Ice Cream Cone'. Once in the town, they are forced to stay because of the spilling of a mysterious Cola ingredient, and soon enough the spoiled actress falls for Blue.

The films is full of cliches, and the eccentric characters are not original. The plot is standard and the performances just par. Christina Ricci, as in most of her most recent films, plays a bitchy cynic, while all the other characters do little: they have a goal and chase after it.

Very disappointing stuff, unoriginal and a script which was not very sharp, treading over similar ground. John Heard is the best thing in the movie, and he's not in it very often as Morgan J. Freeman instead focuses on the youth.

Interesting storyline with a few twists. Well done casting for the most part, including a very young Kate Hudson...Cinematography is spectacular for what's mostly just a desert, hence the title. Nobody seems to have caught one glaring example of a goof...Casey Affleck's character is riding a Honda 250S quad, but when confronted by the Sheriff, he gets very belligerent and says that his quad has an 8000cc turbocharged engine, when it plainly says on the tank 250S, which is 250cc! Its NOT turbocharged but normally aspirated 2 cycle engine, pre-liquid cooled version! 8000cc works out to 488 cu in, larger than the average V8 of today.

Still, all said, it's an entertaining movie if you're bored...

It took awhile to get going, but I ended up loving "Desert Blue" quite a bit. It was nice to see Sexton play a character without the need for anger-management, and I also liked Kate Hudson also. It wasn't the greatest, funniest or most touching movie I ever saw, but it was certainly better than most. I liked practically every character on some level, and I can't say that about a lot of movies. It made me think of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" & "Bagdad Cafe" with a touch of "Firestarter".