Overall Rating
  Awesome: 30.86%
Worth A Look: 28%
Average: 12.57%
Pretty Bad: 13.71%
Total Crap: 14.86%
12 reviews, 103 user ratings
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| Hard Candy |
by Rob Gonsalves
"Kitty Pryde vs. Nite Owl."
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'Hard Candy' is certainly intense, in an attention-grabbing theatrical way. It feels very much like a filmed play, its conflict limited to the battle of wills between a fourteen-year-old girl and a possible pedophile. It even has a hook to buzz about — the notorious sequence having to do with castration. And it isn't a spoiler to reveal that there's a sequence having to do with castration, since that's all anyone has talked about.The movie, a first feature by music-video vet David Slade, bends over backwards to make the talking heads riveting. Of course, when one of the heads is talking about the damage it plans to do to the other head — or the other head's body — our attention is practically guaranteed, if grudgingly given. Hard Candy goes a long way on the power of its leads, Ellen Page (as the lethal-Lolita Hayley) and Patrick Wilson (as the 32-year-old photographer Jeff). Page conveys a kind of sneering intelligence and has the flashier role by far, but it's Wilson who does most of the heavy lifting, luring us to sympathize with a man who, it turns out, is not really worth our sympathy. Yet the movie is structured so that we dread what Hayley has in store for Jeff, even if he deserves it.
I suppose a two-character cat-and-mouse game like Hard Candy can't help but be manipulative. It reminds me of Steven Spielberg's plaintive objection to "manipulative" as a pejorative: every narrative manipulates to some extent. What critics mean when they brand something manipulative is that they feel manipulated — they feel the hands of the director and writer (Brian Nelson hit the keyboard here) pushing them this way and that. Hard Candy seems designed to do that and nothing else. It's the kind of indie film that makes its mark by a controversial theme, an infamous scene, and dines out on its film-festival buzz. But at the end we're left with nothing much other than bruises from having been handled so mercilessly.
Is Hayley supposed to be a psycho or a hero, or both, or neither? Other than Sandra Oh in a needless scene as Jeff's neighbor and Jennifer Holmes as a model Jeff is still obsessed with, the movie really only has the two characters, and the fewer characters there are, the more they seem to stand for. Hayley is pure, infuriated Woman; Jeff is piggish, craven Man. If that sounds like an empowerment fable, or even a minimalist revenge flick, it's actually more along the lines of the vagina dentata paranoia of David Mamet's Oleanna. (That film would make a natural double bill with Hard Candy — just don't bring a first date.) The characters aren't written with any particular subtlety, so Page — an appealing young actress full of unpredictable energy — can't do much with Hayley aside from bratty diabolism. The centerpiece of the film is like art-house torture porn, with the ultimate male fear of what women would do to men if given the chance placed right out front.It's gripping, all right. But, to paraphrase George Lucas, I could grip you pretty hard by making you think I'm going to kill a kitten. What would be the point of it, though, other than proving I could hold your attention (assuming you don't walk out in disgust)? 'Hard Candy' comes on breathing heavily about the real-world topics it exploits — men who prey on young girls via the internet — but goes about its squalid business in such a crude, basic way that it leaves some of us feeling resentful and insulted.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=11287&reviewer=416
originally posted: 10/19/07 13:47:39
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OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2005 Sundance Film Festival. For more in the 2005 Sundance Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2006 South By Southwest Film Festival For more in the 2006 South By Southwest Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2006 Florida Film Festival For more in the 2006 Florida Film Festival series, click here.
OFFICIAL SELECTION: 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival For more in the 2006 Philadelphia Film Festival series, click here.
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USA
14-Apr-2006 (R)
DVD: 19-Sep-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
13-Jul-2006
![[trailer]](/images/icon/trailericon.gif) Trailer
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