White Frog

6.9 of 10. Classic indies have solid, sometimes great, stories that are carried out with a very low budget, but with a couple half-stars to keep it from complete obscurity and extended periods with actors who can't handle their characters. In this case, it's as if it was filmed, directed, and acted by an after-school special crew. Fortunately, there's a great story to integrate it all and seem natural.

Despite a rough, choppy start with abbreviated plot development, the film is highly watchable by half-way through, mixing humor and drama well. Only a few inconsistent performances and story elements to keep it from keeping you totally immersed.

This is such a well told story....the plot is complicated, yet it is simply told. I am not ashamed to say that the tears started soon after the movie begun. Of course they remained until the end. All the performances were simple & simply good. Even the smaller roles were played to perfection. I loved this movie.

This independent production is a real sleeper and should be required viewing for young gay teens. Coming out is a tricky thing and every single individual LGBT person has a different family dynamic to deal with.

In this case Harry Shrum feels he can't do it at least until he's out of the house and on his own away from strict Christian parents Joan Chen and B.D. Wong. Shrum feels he also must stay to take care of his younger brother Booboo Stewart who has Asperger's Syndrome and doesn't really socialize well.

But Shrum is killed by a hit and run driver early on in the film and the rest of the film is how his family and friends deal with his passing. The focus is on Stewart who looked up to his big brother as his protector in this world. Everyone learns about Shrum's sexual orientation after his demise and the family is hit hard.

Especially Stewart who as an Asperger's individual commits things to heart and it's hard for him to unlearn what he's been taught to think about homosexuality. Harder still to learn that Shrum's lover was his alleged heterosexual womanizer Gregg Sulkin.

In the old days what Sulkin did with peers of the female gender was use them as 'beards'. That was an expression for women who hung out with closeted gay men so no one would suspect. Sulkin also comes out and his family dynamic is quite different from Shrum's and Stewart's.

Watching this with Disney actors Stewart and Sulkin I can just see the American Family Association having yet another conniption. But both deliver fine performances.

Recommended highly for gay teen audiences.

A different take on the Autistic kid coming-of-age story. It certainly is set-up a bit differently and it goes into unusual directions, and most of the actors did really good, but I feel that the story was a bit betrayed towards its conclusion with the parents' overblown reaction and even Nick's and then his sudden courage to face a big audience and his parents' sudden change of heart afterwards. It's all too cliche Hollywood tie-in ending and even the dialogue sounds fake and message-oriented. Everybody makes up and embraces the new revelations. But despite all that I'm gonna rate it higher because I do believe it's an underseen hidden gem.

Most of the other online reviews of White Frog seem to have been written by teenagers who have seen more TV than movies, so I'll try to give an adult perspective, in case any other adults are thinking about renting or buying this movie.

First of all, except for two of the adults, I had never before seen or heard of any of the actors in this movie. So a statement like "Booboo Stewart gives, by far, his best performance to date" just leaves me puzzled. A person named Booboo has made movies before? Wow.

Others who rattle off other movies or TV shows these cast members have appeared in together, or refer to a "handsome teen idol cast" also leave me (and probably many other adults) clueless.

Second, I was not ever for even one second moved to tears while watching this movie. Not anywhere close. It is EXTREMELY sappy and manipulative - and painfully predictable. If you are eager to be swept up in shallow emotionalism - or are an adolescent who can't help it - then you may love this movie. It just made me want to pull my hair out.

Finally, if this really is Booboo's "best performance to date", he might want to consider a different career while he's still young enough to change easily. Only very young people who have seen very little of life and the world could be impressed by his performance in this movie. He looked down and mumbled all through the movie... and THAT is supposed to be a great performance? Only in an adolescent TV universe could that be true.

So I'd advise adults to look elsewhere and leave this movie to the kids, with their innocent enthusiasms and the rampant emotions that seethe just under the surface of their lives. It may be better than the TV they're used to, but as a movie it's not worth watching.