Jack & Diane

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

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.

I was really disappointed and was expecting a lot more. I feel like I wasted an hour and 45 minutes I'll never get back. I lasted that long in hopes that something interesting would happen. I was at least hoping for some good sex scenes but that was a disappointment too. I usually like indie films because i know it is a struggle to make them on such a tight budget but I def would not recommend this to anyone. I think I sucks that this site makes you put 10 lines of review for a film that is not worth 10 lines but I guess I will play along if I can spare someone else wasting their time on this film and not searching Netflix for something better.

It was not an horror, drama or comedy; moreover, it was not a good mix of these genres. I could not laugh, could not get scared or felt emotional about anything that is going on in the movie. Mainly, they might want to tell a teenage lesbian story, but they did it in a such a cheap and simple way with very bad cliché dialogue and scenes that you just want to laugh at it. Kylie Minogue plays a small part in the movie, and evidently chosen to make the movie more attractive with her beauty. 23-year-old Juno Temple looks like a early bloomed teenage girl which is also one of the many disturbing and weird things about the movie. At the end of the movie I asked to myself "what was that movie all about?" It's simply a bad movie and waste of time.

The 2 actresses are great, and they are the only reason to watch this heap of confused metaphors. Somehow, with no help from the script or direction, Temple and Keough craft believable characters with palpable chemistry. Their performances make you care about these two young lovers. However, because the script and direction are so poor, these actresses are wasted in a bizarre, slowly paced, depressing film.