No idea why this movie isn't more popular
Speaking only for myself, it's because of Shia LaBeouf.
Years and years ago, there was a series called
Project Greenlight. They took a screenplay from an amateur writer and produced a movie on a shoestring budget. It was very interesting--you got to see all the behind-the-scenes effort that goes into producing a film: casting, scouting locations, rehearsals, budgetary considerations and how they chose the tradeoffs when they had to.
There were several kids in the cast--nonprofessionals who were just thrilled to be in a movie--but eventually the producers decided they needed to part with a good chunk of their money to hire someone with some training for the lead kid. They cast Shia.
So here are all these many, many people knocking themselves out trying to make this movie happen and the one person stomping around being a snotty little prima donna was Shia LaBeouf.
True, he was just a kid, but I've never heard anything about him since then that doesn't sound like he grew from a juvenile brat into an adult brat.
I recognize that an actor's "real life" shouldn't matter if he's talented enough, but I think it does. Probably a big part of, say, Tom Hank's success is that people watching his movies have in the backs of their minds that he'd be really fun to hang out with.
(Actually, this is a pretty good argument for the actors who try to keep their private lives private and limit audiences to judging what they see on the screen.)
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