Hello, My Name Is Frank

This movie was submitted to Best Actors Film Festival and won. Both Best Actor in the category and also Garrett M. Brown won Best Actor of the entire festival. What fine acting. The subject matter is wonderful and sensitive and beautifully portrayed. Casting was excellent. All of the cast was truly top notch. I always like to see a film with really great acting. I hope this film gets released. This is a heartwarming tale of family and friends accepting each other with all their faults. A simply wonderful experience for everyone. I hope I get to see more from the young female actors in this film, and of course the Lead. I was entranced with how he put his performance together.

One of the better movies I have seen in some time, Hello My Name is Frank is laugh-out-loud funny, incredibly dramatic, and a joy to watch. It is filled with incredibly stellar acting performances throughout. The story is sophisticated and quite unique for Hollywood. This movie will entertain you, make you think, and make you laugh and cry.

In particular, Garrett M. Brown's performance in the lead role is a treasure. It alone is worth far more than the cost of viewing this movie. Brown fully commits to his role as a sufferer of Tourette's Syndrome who has recently lost his full-time caregiver. The adventures, character growth, and drama that unfolds when Brown's character embarks upon a road trip with his caregiver's daughter and her friends is mesmerizing. Reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine but far more dramatic, Hello My Name is Frank is a MUST watch!

We watched this on Amazon Prime and I really wanted to like it. The premise of a multi-generational buddy-road movie was intriguing and the reviews were sweet. And its a movie that tried really hard but is based on so many flawed premises that it eventually just collapses under its own improbability. The portrayal of Tourette's is both mildly offensive and irritating conveniently used (and perhaps even unnecessary). There are undeveloped backstories that are never explained, with Frank being both wise and child-like concurrently based on nothing that the viewer is shown. The three young women do a fine job, within their cookie-cutter predictable roles, but the support cast (especially a just bizarre holy-roller and his stereo-typical son) are formulaic at best.

All of this is set within a confused geography, which would have the viewer believe that the Columbia River is located at both the southern entrance to Oregon and, somehow, at its border with Washington too. Or that lush PNW farmsteads are located adjacent to barren deserts, or that the route from California to Washington never involves going through city.

This movie tried. It didn't make it. Watch something else.

And it is a very nice simple movie!

A young girl just at graduation from high school finds herself having to care for a middle-aged man with severe Tourette's Syndrome and dealing with her mothers recent death. Ideally at this time in a teens life the thoughts of leaving home and creating your own path should be her main concern but life has other plans for her.

After numerous failed attempts to hire a suitable caregiver for her uncle with Tourette's syndrome Laura and her two friends decide to take the uncle with them on their planed post graduation road trip. This is the setup for the movie.

Well Garrett M. Brown as the Tourette's stricken uncle is totally unconvincing. And the funny scenes such as the baseball bat incident come across as more creepy than the intended funny it is suppose to be. They hit the road and the comedy never shows up for me. Yes there are smiles and moments of levity but the situations never become really funny. Of course the girls learn a life lesson from Frank and there is the expected happy ending. Almost to hours of story and it's just all mostly forgettable.

This movie covers a lot of important issues and it does it with humor, sensitivity and honesty. I have only one complaint. I lived in Eastern Washington. Although there are lots of red necks in Eastern Washington, I have never heard of any snake handling sect of Bible thumping crazies. That's not a very accurate stereotype. It would have been more realistic to go with some other religious fanatics, there's plenty to chose from in that area. Still, it was well worth watching.