The idea of the "perfect" older son dying and leaving the parents and friends with the supposedly less than perfect second son, is hardly original
Stand by Me, for example, and the sibling rivalries in various James Dean movies. Having the second son burdened with a genuine disability is probably not that common. Having the younger disabled son cope with the posthumous outing of the older son as gay is, I'm pretty certain, a unique approach to the often told tale of a teenager coming out. The story concept is the best thing about White Frog and the result has failed to capitalize on the potential.
The attempt to link the tale of the Vietnamese coconut frog to the character(s) in this movie seems a bit of a stretch possibly a (failed) attempt to introduce an intellectual flavor of the inscrutable, exotic Orient to a movie that is really about a bunch of upper middle class Americans. Since none of the cast looks especially Vietnamese, the connection is even more tenuous. Maybe to some eyes "they" all look alike.
Booboo and especially the actors who played the friends and secret lover of Chaz were sufficiently charming to make the movie enjoyable the rest of the characters, not so much. Through most of the movie the parents were annoying and heavy handed caricatures of parents behaving badly. The therapist who talked to Nick seemed to have modeled her character after a nagging Jewish or Asian grandmother who practices no-nonsense tough love. It didn't come across very well.
The occasional setting and final scenes in a community center run by a lesbian, funded at start-up in part by the deceased Chaz and whose members are oddly supportive for Nick, who they couldn't have known very well, was a little too much like something out of an old Judy Garland. Mickey Rooney movie or even worse, an episode of Glee.
There were PC messages aplenty, the main one being that everyone should accept himself and others as they are, something that most young people are portrayed as being better at than the anal-retentive older generation ... although given the amount of catastrophic bullying in schools, that seems a myth. As an Afterschool Special it probably needed to be fairly blunt in making its points. There's a lot to be said, however, for subtlety in plot and performance, largely missing in this movie.
Of course people want to be kind when dealing with kids coping with handicaps and sexual identity crises and rites of passage, and I suppose there were a few moments when tears could have been shed. The subject matter sympathy vote aside, this movie was enjoyable due mainly to some of the actors involved but, despite all that it had going for it, it was still a disappointing result.
The attempt to link the tale of the Vietnamese coconut frog to the character(s) in this movie seems a bit of a stretch possibly a (failed) attempt to introduce an intellectual flavor of the inscrutable, exotic Orient to a movie that is really about a bunch of upper middle class Americans. Since none of the cast looks especially Vietnamese, the connection is even more tenuous. Maybe to some eyes "they" all look alike.
Booboo and especially the actors who played the friends and secret lover of Chaz were sufficiently charming to make the movie enjoyable the rest of the characters, not so much. Through most of the movie the parents were annoying and heavy handed caricatures of parents behaving badly. The therapist who talked to Nick seemed to have modeled her character after a nagging Jewish or Asian grandmother who practices no-nonsense tough love. It didn't come across very well.
The occasional setting and final scenes in a community center run by a lesbian, funded at start-up in part by the deceased Chaz and whose members are oddly supportive for Nick, who they couldn't have known very well, was a little too much like something out of an old Judy Garland. Mickey Rooney movie or even worse, an episode of Glee.
There were PC messages aplenty, the main one being that everyone should accept himself and others as they are, something that most young people are portrayed as being better at than the anal-retentive older generation ... although given the amount of catastrophic bullying in schools, that seems a myth. As an Afterschool Special it probably needed to be fairly blunt in making its points. There's a lot to be said, however, for subtlety in plot and performance, largely missing in this movie.
Of course people want to be kind when dealing with kids coping with handicaps and sexual identity crises and rites of passage, and I suppose there were a few moments when tears could have been shed. The subject matter sympathy vote aside, this movie was enjoyable due mainly to some of the actors involved but, despite all that it had going for it, it was still a disappointing result.