"Samson and Delilah" isn't a badly made movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I nonetheless mostly hated it.
It tells the story of two lonely teenagers in aboriginal Australia, pretty much discarded on the trash heap of Australian society (as is the entire aboriginal community if this movie is any indication) who go off together to eke out an existence of sorts in an unnamed Australian city. It chronicles in grisly detail their descent into drug use and homelessness, heaping one horribly depressing indignity on another until it becomes nearly unwatchable. It's not that I don't feel bad for people whose lives are like this. On the contrary, I feel terrible, which is why a movie that exists for no other reason than to make me feel as bad as possible feels like a sermon delivered by some righteous do-gooder full of lessons I've already learned.
The last 20 minutes of the film do turn around and offer the hint of a happy ending, but it had already lost me by then and whatever even slightly positive conclusions the movie came to felt false.
Grade: D
It tells the story of two lonely teenagers in aboriginal Australia, pretty much discarded on the trash heap of Australian society (as is the entire aboriginal community if this movie is any indication) who go off together to eke out an existence of sorts in an unnamed Australian city. It chronicles in grisly detail their descent into drug use and homelessness, heaping one horribly depressing indignity on another until it becomes nearly unwatchable. It's not that I don't feel bad for people whose lives are like this. On the contrary, I feel terrible, which is why a movie that exists for no other reason than to make me feel as bad as possible feels like a sermon delivered by some righteous do-gooder full of lessons I've already learned.
The last 20 minutes of the film do turn around and offer the hint of a happy ending, but it had already lost me by then and whatever even slightly positive conclusions the movie came to felt false.
Grade: D