The Florida Project 2017
Have you ever wanted to live in a fleabag hotel but were worried about crime, noise, and bedbugs? Then this is a great movie for you. This movie is about a foul-mouthed mother and her foul-mouthed kid living at a cheap hotel in central Florida. Normally bad language doesn’t bother me, but the mother is so filled with anger and is so abusive to people she deals with and the kid is just criminally rotten. They have occasional moments of grace, at least. The movie (no real plot) is mostly shot from the 8 year old’s point of view, wandering a section of the highway with her friends, taking whatever opportunity she can to beg for change for ice cream or do property damage. Her mother does kind of the same, struggling to pay the weekly rent, but always has cigarettes, booze, or weed around. It’s a terrible situation that way too many people are in, barely afloat, if that, always on the verge of hunger or homelessness. It is a hard movie to watch, mostly unpleasant, and for that I have to give it a bad grade. Also it is shot in classic indie style which makes it feel like I’ve seen it a dozen times before. I can see why some critics would really like the way it paints a portrait of life on the edge, and the actors are good, even the children, which is probably due to very good direction. So there are strong elements here, but not much for me to enjoy.
Written: 18 Feb 2019