Lloyd - Der Klassenclown

I was channel surfing one day and saw this movie on HBO. Is it just me, or does this kid have Gary Coleman disease. He looks exactly the way he did when he was in "little giants"...In 1994!!! Its about this loser kid who is trying to find a way to show this girl he likes her. She shoots him down and starts making out with this handsome jerk, Storm(keep in mind this is about 5th graders). So he cries and feels sorry for himself. And it all resolves in the final climactic scene at the schools spaghetti dinner. Instead of the square dancing lloyds sopposed to do, HE DISCOS INSTEAD!!!! YEA LLOYD, STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!! This results to the classic (or tired) food fight scene. Then lloyd uses magic to put a cactus costume on Storm. And he falls down. AND EVERYBODYS HAPPY AGAIN. But the girl still doesn't like him though. This movie is unrealistic and depressing. I mean this kid is ugly, look at the picture above!!! This movie is obviously some nerd's fantasy. He really makes the girls in this movie mean. Example:

Girl 1: There is this one boy in my class who smells like a dog's fart.

Girl 2: That LLoyd kid looks like he came out of my hamster.

Girl 3: I just got a love note.

Girl 1: I get those all the time!

Girls dont say "fart"! This guy must of had a lousy childhood. Dont watch this movie if your depressed. You may get suicidal. But if you are one of us pretty people, sit back, pop this tape in the VCR and get ready to have a great time at the expense of ugly nerds!!!

What can I say, I absolutely love this movie. I saw it on HBO a while back and loved it but I was never able to catch it again. But last week I got it on DVD so I can watch this great movie whenever I want. It is funny and heartwarming. Todd Bosley gives a terrific performance as Lloyd. Two big thumbs up.

I have nephews the same age as the main character in this film, & I think they'd spend the better part of this film as embarrassed as I was. But, briefly, here's the plot:

Lloyd is a skinny, red-headed, bespectacled sixth-grader (think of a twelve-year-old Carrot Top & you're dead on) who's so desperate to be popular that he is constantly doing ridiculous things that only get him jeers. He falls in love with the "new girl at school" but she goes for the boy that says, "I'm cute & popular." Furthermore, the teachers aren't entirely supportive of him. At home, his mother gives him pep talks but his little brother, apparently a kind of nine-year-old Cassanova, rags on him as much as anyone. Lloyd falls into a depression until he decides to use the only skill he seems to have, an interest in magic, to turn the tables on one of his teachers at a school function.

It sounds like standard kiddie movie fare, but there are some weird elements to this movie that compelled me to write this commentary. First of all, the kids are not very good actors. An elementary school in a suburb of Los Angeles doing the traditional Thanksgiving story could run rings around these youngsters. The tagline seems to want us to believe this is a story about self-esteem, but beside his queer looks, Lloyd really isn't all that special. The magic he learns from weird special guest Tom Arnold isn't really magic at all - it's a trick played in a movie, reliant on the cameras & editing, certainly not one a twelve-year-old could learn. So his search for self-esteem is banal in the extreme - was the director hoping for an audience of underachievers? & if he got it, wouldn't even underachievers be offended by it?

I was also a little nonplussed by the emphasis on children's sexuality. While obviously not on the level of your average teen "but I've never had sex" comedy, the film seems to spend a lot of time showing children in their early teens (barely out of adolescence) holding hands, kissing for the first time, dreaming about kissing, & talking about it. Lloyd's only friend describes french kissing as "ringing the bell" in the back of a girl's mouth. Oh, doubtless kids that age think about & do things of that nature all the time - it just felt stilted & clumsy to me, especially as Lloyd was completely clueless in that regard. An examination of the whys & hows of early courting, seen though the eyes of an outsider, could have been funny & revealing here.

The most confusing element is the stuff added apparently for adults wanting to be entertained while taking their kids to see the movie. A convenience store clerk with difficult facial hair stares at a movie he's watching at work & says, "I have got to finish film school." Tom Arnold, as a sort of mentor to Lloyd, talks a lot about how fat he used to be. The teacher in the "special ed" class Lloyd is sent to tells the kids he has problems with depression & talks about how an imaginary friend helped him in school, though the classes he mentioned are obviously college-level. Remember, this is not an indie comedy or even a Saturday Night Live franchise flick. This is ostensibly a movie to be viewed by kids in elementary & middle school. (In any event, for a fellow in his 30s, even those parts aren't very funny.)

I remember as a kid, the sophisticated parts of Warner Brothers cartoons might have baffled me, but the stuff for the whole family was funny. Later on, the deeply censored Hanna Barbera cartoons of the 70s were just plain insulting, even to a ten-year-old. But I can't believe that the director of this movie really thought he was talking to kids the same age as Lloyd. Now, I caught this film in the afternoon with nothing else on, & had never heard of it, so it didn't make much of a splash. But I think it's fair to say that some of the reasons it didn't were: a talentless, uninteresting cast; an unambitious focus; & baffling attempts to be funny beyond its apparent audience's years.

"Lloyd" is a movie for kids, but the film tells the common story of an outsider kid with so much irony and wit that even adults may have fun here.

The performance of Todd Bosley (he can make a grimace as good as Jim Carrey) as Lloyd is above average for a child actor. He creates attention for his character, makes him believable and likable. There are only few scenes where he overacts, but that will be forgiven ! Most of the time he plays as if he parodies himself !

Irony is created by the use of characters like the old Lady Lloyd works for (the one with the horrible garden), the teacher Mr. Weid (Taylor Negron) who tells his pupils about his depressions, Tony Longo as dance-teacher and even Tom Arnold in a small, but nice performance as magician.

Good and inventive camera work in many scenes (close-ups of Lloyd's face, the scene with the lawn-mower) ! Good child actors in supporting parts as well (Brendon Ryan Barrett as Troy, Sammy Elliott as Lloyd's brother Nathan) as good casting with Mary Mara as Lloyd's mother.

Unfortunately at the end there are too many childish scenes, e.g. the spaghetti fight and the story about the friendship between Troy and Lloyd isn't finished the nice way it began, it just doesn't seem to be important to the director any longer.

6 out of 10

Lloyd deserves 4 stars!!! This movie is sooooo funny! I like the girl that says "I love ketchup"!!! It was soo funny when Lloyd and his friend put bras on in front of that pizza guy!!!! Watch this movie!!!:)