This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat. The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
After a few minutes into the film (About 30 minutes or so), I could not take this movie any more. The lead character's meeting new a person in a different city, one after the other, was becoming too much of a problem for me. I just did not care anymore of where he is going to go next and who is he going to meet. And when you stop caring about what the characters do in their film, there is very little to hold your interest in the film.Breaking off concurrent relationships with an older woman and her son, we are introduced to Daniel, as he prances around London thinking he's God's gift to man and woman. But his freewheeling existence is put into question when his eccentric grandmother, the one person he genuinely cares for, sends him on a wild-goose chase to locate her father's grave. Traveling through Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade in Serbia and Sofia in Bulgaria, he learns a thing or two about life. He meets new people in every country and invariable forms some sort of sexual relationship with them irrespective of their gender. He discovers that feelings of true romantic love can exist, even for someone who can't reciprocate. He also receives valuable history lessons about his Jewish heritage, which in the past meant very little to him.
As I mentioned before, the moviegoer might find himself trapped and wearied by this repetitively stop-and-go script. What could have been a point of focus feels almost hackneyed by the conclusion. Some changes in Daniel's personality are illustrated nicely. It humbles him to a point where he begins to take pride in his heritage and what his great-grandfather had done to help preserve it. Nevertheless, Daniel is quiet about his new consciousness. The actor playing the part of Daniel does his job fine but when the script itself is flawed, the actors cannot get above the rest. By the time the frustratingly silly ending arrives, it's confirmed that "Shem," which translates to "name" in Hebrew, is just as confused as its protagonist.
If you have been liking the kind of films that I like, then you might want to stay away from this one. (2/10)
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Cheers.