14/02/2017

About Scout

                                   
These road trip get to know each other quirky suicidal teens thing is feeling a little played out now. I really liked 'Little Miss Sunshine', and I REALLY liked 'Donnie Darko' (which I feel had just the right amount of this feeling mixed in with sci-fi and creep-out horror) but 'About Scout' feels a bit on the nose.
The strengths here are the character actors, who all perform well and have a nice chemistry with one another. I didn't even find the little girl that annoying. However their backgrounds are only skimmed over to the point where we can identify what flavour of character trope they are, before they're thrust together for wacky races.
               
                 
There are also plenty of plot holes, jumps in logic, and many weird choices are made by the characters that don't really make sense on close inspection. It edges dangerously close to 'Juno' levels of cutsey quirky crap now and then too.
It was basically fine though, the sisters were cute together and I liked the guy (though that might just be because he reminded me of lots of other characters that I like – his back story was never really gotten into in any meaningful way, beyond an opening scene and a few 'The Great Gatsby' references).
                       
About Scout: 37.0