The Whole of the Moon

New Zealand film maker Ian Mune tackles the medical problem of cancer and youth - a subject hardly conducive to user-friendly cinema entertainment - and welcomely manages to avoid familiar audience manipulation that might otherwise potentially drown the flick in sentiment. It's low budget and most of it centers on the growing friendship between two cancer afflicted teenagers in a hospital ward. The problem is, that the performances are so mediocre, and the script too ordinary (in that unmistakeably New Zealand fashion for no frills dialog) that the viewer struggles to engage with the characters with any convincing sense of emotional involvement. Good intentions are simply not enough to drum up audience interest in what amounts to generally tedious viewing.