Funny Boy

Many aspects of this film are fascinating, like the scenery and location shots. Cannot speak to the 'Tamil' voice/accent issue which is of concern to many. I did read that there has been a lot of voice dubbing which would explain why, at times, the spoken English(unsubtitled) is difficult to understand. The meat market scene is presented without appropriate context. I found the scenes where the main character was jumped back and forth in age to be annoying rather that developmental. However, the film does seem to capture well the trauma of being caught up in ethnic/religious disputes.

I just watched this film, and I enjoyed it so much I rushed here to give it my rating - My decided rating usually reflects the overall IMDb score. Therefore, I was surprised to find a 5.5 score. However, I saw that one person gave Funny Boy a 1-star rating based on the fact the language spoken was incorrect. Seriously? This film does not bill itself as a true story; it is a work of fiction set in a location and period of historical significance. But even so, no mature person rates a film based on one flaw. What about cinematography, the plot, the dialogue, the acting, etc. All these things should inform a person's score. Therefore, this film deserves a far better score than what it presently has.

I plead ignorance to what happened in Sri Lanka, prior to watching this movie. I understand if people are disappointed if it wasn't Tamil people playing the parts. But I'm SO glad I ignored 95% of the reviews on here. This is a good movie. People are rating it so poorly because of politics (as I say, they may have a point but that's not *my* point).

I'm confident the majority of 1 star reviews are written by a few people with multiple accounts. It's a shame, as if I had listened to them - and avoided the movie, I wouldn't have learned what happened. I am now (because of this movie) more aware and have since read up on what happened. That wouldn't have happened without this movie.

But anyway! I was gutted when this ended, and it made me feel plenty of emotions. I got angry, I got upset when I related to the little gay boy so much, I laughed at the brazenness of the sparring kids, and I mourned what happened between the two people.

If like me you're looking for a movie that will make you feel and make you think - I'd definitely recommend Funny Boy.

After reading all the below reviews it seems that Tamilians got offended just because of the language spoken in the movie. Are you guys really a viewer or trollers?

Arjun is Tamil boy who realises he's gay in a country that criminalises people like him. The movie follows his life from childhood to young manhood, set in Sri Lanka during the ethnic war that resulted in somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 deaths, and one million Tamils migrating to India, Canada, and other countries. The story is one damn thing after another. The messiness, almost incoherence of the script, mimics this, but also distances us from the characters, who become objects moved around by events that they don't and can't control. Arjun's relationship with Shean doesn't free either of them, it's at best a brief time of mutual joy which can't resist the politics surrounding it. The acting is uniformly very good, helping us Westerners understand a culture so different and yet oddly similar to our own. I get the impression that Mehta had a clear vision of what she wanted, and it wasn't a neatly structured plot tied up with a neat bow of a resolution. I think she also wanted to show how avoiding politics is no defence. The movie was engaging despite itself, the kind that tosses up half-recalled scenes when you least expect them. Worth watching, even if only to get a vague notion of what it's like to live in a different society than your own. I read a number of attacks on this movie, all of which focused on two points, and which all betrayed that the critics had political axes to grind. Pity.