Not what I expected
"Two athletic, popular high school friends are living the perfect life until an incident occurs on the night of a 17th birthday party."
That's the teaser I saw for this movie shown on a local cable station, I thought, well something terrible happens on said birthday: someone is killed, or there's a gang rape of a drunken girl, or they burn the house down. Who knows, standard fare for a teen angst movie. But as I began watching I couldn't quite connect the dots of what was going on with the two friends, their families, and their peripheral friends at school. Then the "incident' happened and a furor broke loose at the school. Suddenly the two boys are no longer friends. That's when this became not just another movie about troubled teens. A lie spreads quickly through the school population, and suddenly everyone knows what supposedly happened. One boy (Franky) is ostracized, after which he begins to discover himself and what really matters. The supposedly broken, though still defiant, Franky, through encounters with other "outsiders" of his school -- the slut-shamed girl (Nathasha), the openly gay girl (Mouse) -- begin to open up his character to what he might be beyond just the popular high school jock. One hilarious scene alone, between Franky and Mouse, the openly gay girl, is worth the price of admission.
A movie well worth watching, with great performances by Franky, Natasha and Mouse, supported by Frankly's mother (Maria Bello) and estranged father (Kyle MacLachlan).
8 out of 10 stars from me.