Kids


Someone not familiar with American culture watching Clueless and Kids would be very confused about the state of the children in this country. While the former depicts the teenagers as rich free-wheeling types, the latter depicts them as dopeheads whose major interest is sex. I'm sure such examples exist in this country at the extremes, but however obnoxious and free-spirited they are, I think the average teen is pretty, well, average. (I'm basing this on what I see around me.) Also, it doesn't take much intelligence to figure that this behaviour can't be all that prevalent, else a movie wouldn't have been made about it.

The characters in Kids are slightly younger than its Clueless counterpart. The story deals with more realistic issues that are related to sex and drugs. But the focus on other issues related to teens, such as what they do for fun is minimal. There is some reference to skateboarding, rollerblading, and cars, but there's not much else. I really hope that these things aren't the be-all and the end-all of the teenage experience in this country.

Kids is done in a documentary style, so there's not much of a plot to it. The frankness might be disturbing to some at the beginning, but it begins to wear thin by the end of the movie.


Movie ramblings || Ram Samudrala || me@ram.org