When
a film is produced based a novel, but instead of official key art, there’s just a
forlorn looking “soon to be a major motion picture” burst on the cover, you
know the poor marketing department had some awkward meetings with sales. That’s
the case with Sam Munson’s teen novel, but his publisher probably isn’t missing
out on much. Fans of the book are likely to be vocally disappointed in Sacha
Gervasi’s adaptation of November
Criminals (trailer
here), which
opens today in New York.
In
the book, Addison Schacht is a small-time pot dealer, who enjoys collecting
Holocaust jokes, even though he is Jewish. In the film, he is a mopey sad sack,
who is still grieving the sudden death of his mother. For kids who hadn’t read Catcher in the Rye, Schacht’s snarky,
drug-addled voice really resonated, but it is entirely lost here. At least he
still proceeds to investigate the murder of Kevin Broadus, a straight-laced
African American classmate, whose death the lazy DC cops just write-off as a gang-related
incident. However, as Schacht starts to snoop around, he realizes he maybe didn’t
know Broadus as well as he thought he did. Of course, in the book, he would be
the first to admit he hardly knew Broadus at all.
If
you are going to remove everything edgy and distinctive about a book than why
bother? You’re just setting everyone up for fan blowback. Instead, why not
write a completely original, bland-as-cardboard screenplay about as shaggy dog
high school student solving a friend’s murder? It is particularly disappointing
that such an unremarkable time-waster was co-written by Steven Knight, the
screenwriter of Dirty Pretty Things and
Eastern Promises, as well as Locke and Redemption, which he also helmed. Surely, there must be a much more
interesting draft sitting neglected on his hard-drive.
Ansel
Elgort has been cast in some high-profile YA properties, so the media acts like
he is a star, but he can’t prove it in November.
Frankly, he seems to have the antidote for charisma. Spending extended time with
whiny, grandstanding Schacht just becomes excruciatingly painful. Chloë Grace
Moretz shows more signs of life as Phoebe, the platonic pal turned potential
romantic interest, but there is not much she can do with the thinly sketched
character. She too has been watered down from the source novel, in which she
appears as “Digger,” Schacht’s friend-with-benefits. Ironically, the most fully
developed performances come from David Strathairn as Schacht’s widowed father
and Catherine Keener as Phoebe’s single mom Fiona.
The
book uses Schacht’s college admittance essay as the narrative device framing
the story, but in the film, he mails off his application in the first scene.
Instead, the movie Schacht uses a video diary to express his feelings and
establish the exposition, which is a nauseatingly tired cliché, post-Sex, Lies and Videotape. Still, you
could argue it perfectly suits such a dull work of mediocrity. Not recommended,
November Criminals opens today (12/8)
in New York, at the Cinema Village.
