Evergreen

I grew up about 20 minutes outside of Marysville, WA and left that crap town about two minutes after I turned 18. Evergreen is the reason why. The plot may seem slow and manufactured to some, but that's just because they don't have the depth to understand that kind of life. The Pacific Northwest is a unique place: there's poverty with few ways out and the writer accurately displayed its territory of factories and Indian casinos. If your family wasn't in on the Intel or Microsoft boom, then you were likely at the mercy of the Georgia Pacific factory (Toliet Paper) or Bellingham Cold Storage (frozen fish factory). Inidan Reservations can only get support from the government through establishing a Casino, which often wouldn't create the revenues they needed to sustain their initial investments.

Although I had the advantage (or should I say disadvantage) of understanding these characters unique situations because I too, was raised in a four room shack with a leaky roof, we had vermin and a garage with no garage doors, as well as an unmanicured lawn because we couldn't afford to fix the lawnmower- I still believe the writer had a larger responsibility to the audience to which does not understand these circumstances, let alone the little victories and joy in escaping them.

The acting was sympathetic and believable, but the writing could have been strengthened if - instead of being shown the rainy depressing details of the town - we experienced them through the characters. Henri never goes to the edge the way you do when you truly are in poverty like that. Trust me on that. We only saw a little fight here or there, but no significant strain of plot. When you're up against the wall in that kind of poverty - without enough money for "bus fare" and you don't have your own bed as the roof above leaks on you, there are ways of coping. Drugs, alcohol, sex, prostitution, runaways, crime, vandalism...and all we see is just a little more than what a suburbanite kid on an ABC after school special might turn to.

This film couldn't help but grab me because it pulled me back into a place I left 12 years ago with a piece of junk car much like the one Kate's boyfriend drove around in. The grass, trees, sound of rain, the logs, the storefronts, it was all set still in time, and it was the first time I'd been back to that place I never wanted to set foot in again. But not every moviegoer will have this perspective.

Sometimes, there's a reason not to go back, and after seeing this film I now remember why. It left me with that same hopeless, tired, sad feeling that being in a family of victims is as high in life as one can go. Thank God that piece of junk car of mine just kept going. I'd suggest you do the same.

This views like an after school special. The acting is almost as bad as daytime soap operas, and about as slow moving and overacted too. While the beginning does manage to hook you in, 15 to 20 minutes later you have extricated that hook and are reaching for the remote. Not one character was believable in their role, from the periphery students all the way up to the main character and her mother and grandmother. The 10 star reviews here are bought and paid for and I advise to disregard them. The inconsistencies in this movie are glaring. For someone with no money she has makeup, nice clothing, jewelry etc. The mother just harps on their bright future while bemoaning everything they don't have. The home they were living in would have been condemned in a second. At first glance at the outside you just knew it was a home sought out by a movie scout and inserted into one shot to try and get the sense of wrenching poverty driven home to viewers who aren't so savvy.

Evergreen is a type of film that I particularly enjoy. It deals with the lives of people we might ignore or shun if we encountered them in the course of our own lives. Nevertheless, these people share aspirations and frustrations common to all humanity and the adversities they strive to overcome make such people fascinating.

Evergreen is well written and extremely well acted. The cast can't be faulted on any level. On the other hand, "Gas, Food, Lodging," a film that is, in many respects, similar is vastly superior to this one.

As an experiment with the potential to make movie distribution far more profitable than currently is the case, AMC has converted this film to digital technology and is "feeding" the film to its theaters via satellite. The resultant images are dark, murky and lacking in precise focus. My own large screen TV provides a much superior image and it is not "state-of-the art" technology.

I will not be seeing any more films that employ this crude technology. I'd rather wait for the DVD or, even, skip the whole experience.

At the Sundance screening of this film, the director told us that the "evergreen" of the title referred to the green envy the main character feels toward those who have so much while she does not. This was a realistic story of a young girl who moves into her grandmother's ramshakle house with her grandmother. They are quite poor, and when the girl (Henri) meets a rich boy at school, she wants to be part of his family. The movie is about Henri's discovery that money doesn't really take away problems. This was good effort for all involved.

This film attempts admirably to show the pain of adolescence, especially in a poor family. Unfortunately it lacks the quality of acting and direction to give it real impact. We are distracted by the fact that some of the characters at least don't seem real and the actors often don't seem to be "on the same page".

This viewer made the mistake of taking at face value a reviewer's rating of four stars - a reviewer I didn't even know! - and then being disappointed. My own fault!

Perhaps if I had entered the room with different expectations, or been given the realization that this movie was truly a first time effort or compromised somewhat by low budget I would have been able to be more charitable - and possibly derived more enjoyment from it. But alas the unknown reviewer gave it a glowing rating. Too bad.