Barry

This was the first movie that popped up tonight when I got on Netflix; I didn't hesitate to start it up. I personally don't understand all of the mediocre reviews. This movie shows a part of our president's past, and it shows that he is a human being just like us. Barack Obama went through all of the troubles that we go through in everyday life; love, heartache, trying to find himself, ridicule, fights, etc. This movie shows all of those things, and it shows us another side of this great man. This movie mainly takes place in New York City when Barack was attending Harvard. It shows what his college life was like, and man did he have a hard time. This movie shows you what it was like back in that time period. No, this is not the Barack Obama that we know and love (some people hate) yet, but it shows who he was before he found his calling in life. If you like inspiring movies that keep your attention, you should definitely give this one a watch. It will definitely give you more insight into how Barack Obama became the man he is today.

I wonder who felt compelled to change the the facts: 1- Ann Dunham was 18 when she had Barak. Why have her say she was 19? 2- Obama Sr got a masters at Harvard. Why have Barry say it was a PhD?

3- no comment how he got from Occidental to Columbia?

4- in the eighties I was pulled over in my own town because my car was covered in salt from driving on the highway in the winter. As I'm not black I couldn't claim racism was his reason for pulling me over. But I did appreciate the police looking into any suspicious vehicles.

Nothing in this movie explains 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, how Barack met Michelle, or any of the other missing pieces of information from Barak's past.

Barry simply put is the early years of Barack Obama in New York and his struggles trying to fit himself among the people there. Simply put, it his the identity crises caused because of his mixed ethnicity.

Its a beautiful story on paper but in the hands of director Vikram Gandhi, this is a story lost in translation.

The movie starts of well as the young Barack moves into New York with a serious identity crisis. It is shown that he never as such connected with his Dad in Kenya, his years in Manila have changed him and he questions the things around him. He cannot mix with either the blacks or the whites. He has a nice sweet white girlfriend but due to the crisis inside him, he starts to move away from here. And he has loving mother beautifully played by Ashley Judd who tells him that all will be fine one day.

However, the writing is inconsistent and we are never ever able to understand or feel the chaos inside Obama. At some places the story is drifting and I was wondering what is happening. However, the ending saves the film from being a total washout.

Devon Terrell is a good actor and its too early for me to judge him through this film since the writing and directing are not upto the mark. He does put up a nice performance and I hope to see more of him soon.

The rest of the cast puts a commendable performance and the movie is worth a visit on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

This film had important themes about being biracial in America, now or in the 1980's, but having Barack "Barry" Obama was detrimental (for me, at least).

The director said in an interview that the idea was to "accurately tell the story of a mixed-race kid in New York in 1981 that would one day become the 44th President of the United States," yet the latter part of that idea is non-existent in the film. It's just an accurate story about a mixed-race kid in New York in 1981 and that's it. I have no idea why Barack Obama is the main character of this film other than that he happens to be biracial. Any other detail specific to Barry is irrelevant to the story. You could have made this about a fictional biracial person named Darryl and it would have been exactly the same movie.

I found this confounding, because "Barry" IS the main character. And it was marketed as being about a young Barack Obama, which comes with certain expectations of seeing something that relates to the Obama we know - elements you would find in any other biopic - that are nowhere to be found. At best, you could make the argument that these experiences shaped the way he sees race in America, but there's nothing in the film to suggest that it did, which is even more confounding.

Had the main character been someone else, the theme of finding out where you belong would have made this a good film - competent acting, good dialogue and secondary characters. Everything was there, but setting the expectation of an Obama biopic and not delivering on that promise just left me disappointed.

If you're interested in seeing the film purely for that theme, you'll probably enjoy it.

If you're looking to learn about Barack Obama's college years, you'll be disappointed.

The movie is an interesting look at the President's early life. We've come to expect the current President to be cool and collected and this movie looks at the anxieties and insecurities that he would have faced at that time.

I would recommend this movie to a person interested in human behaviour. The film is, at its heart, the study of a young mixed-raced man trying to find his place in early 1980s New York but it also interesting as Obama's personal story, particularly his slightly disapproving view of his mother and his conflicted feelings about his absent father.

The lead actor Terrell does a great and convincing job as the young Obama. However, the film lacks something special and leaves you with the lingering feeling that there's another installment to be watched.