Jack & Diane - Love is a Monster

Jack & Diane (2012)

** (out of 4)

This film has been thrown out as a lesbian teen drama, a romantic drama and even a horror drama and while it does try to mix all of those things I think it fails for the most part. The story centers on British teen Diane (Juno Temple) who falls in love with female friend Jack (Riley Keough) and we see their troubled relationship turn into something rather bizarre. I'm really not sure what JACK & DIANE was trying to do unless it just wanted to be one of those indie movies that managed to be all over the place and seem rather other worldly while wanting the viewer to make up their mind on what it's about. I don't think the film was as bad as some of the reviews out there but there's still no question that there are quite a few flaws here. The biggest is that the film just never really makes us care about the characters and this here is the fault of the screenplay. I'm really not sure what writer-director Bradley Rust Gray was wanting to say or do with these characters but they never really come to life. For the majority of the overlong running time I was just sitting there wondering what anything I was watching was supposed to mean. The romantic elements never really work, the drama between the two never works and when the horror elements do show up they just seem out of place. The werewolf creation looks pretty bad but I think this was done on purpose. The horror elements just really seem out of place as if they were added just to expand the market. I did think the director at least made a good looking film and it was certainly professionally done. The biggest draw for me was the two leads and I thought both of them did a very good job. I thought Keough, Elvis' granddaughter, does a very good job in her part and I thought she handled the character well and managed to make you believe her in the role. Temple was absolutely charming in her part and her beauty certainly helped carry the film but she also managed to give an actual performance. With that said, it's hard to know who to recommend this thing to because the film's really all over the map and doesn't really succeed at anything it tries.

Wow this was an epic failure on the part of the director. The movie was a roller-coaster of emotions that never made sense or came together towards the end of the film. The irony of the film is that he was trying to tell a story about first love, yet the dialogue between the supposed two in love was poor or nonexistent. There was no special bond shown on screen at all which left the audience even more confused after the movie was over. Moreover, there was no character development conveyed throughout the film which would have helped us believe more that the two were falling in love.

And yes, is this a film about love, horror, tragedy, or comedy? Who knows? The one thing I enjoyed was the soundtrack and music selection.

Weird movie... Sexual/monster thriller/romance movie. I liked it, but could've been better.

There's some very amateurish stuff here - not least in the script and sound design.

We know that Juno can do a lot better, so it must have been a struggle for her with this material.

Personally, this started to irritate me very early on, with the excessively intrusive music standing in for an actually engaging story, and the very poor dialogue. It gets a *little* better as it develops some kind of direction but frankly I started tuning out well before the half-way mark.

Film school stuff... hopefully everyone learned a lot!

This movie is dreadful.

The sound quality was really poor which in the end didn't matter because the dialogue was woeful and the plot pretty much nonexistent.

I really like Juno Riley and Kylie but nothing they gave could save this.

The director must be self funded because I noticed he made movies after this and there is no way he would ever have a studio risk money on him making anything for them.

I am definitely never going to get back the 101 minutes I foolishly wasted on this.

I should have rewatched Catwoman.

I hope nobody else accidentally views this or anything else made by this director.