Boys Don't Cry

Bomb Rating: 

"Boys Don't Cry" puts a face on white trash, which is like putting a face on baby seal clubbing.

This is a rare movie. That's because it's rare when a film can accurately portray a state of mind and sense of place so precisely that it can be summed up in one word. A single word. Critics have wasted sentences and paragraphs on this film, proving what blowhards they all are, because one need merely utter a single word to convey everything this film has to offer. Here's that word: Nebraska.

There isn't a place in the world in which I'd rather spend less time. There aren't people I'd care to know less. Do you know why the Interstate west out of Lincoln is dead straight for four hundred miles? It's so that when the fine people of the state of Nebraska wander onto the highway, they have ample time to look down the road and recall why lumbering onto the Interstate isn't a good idea. The state government discovered that far too many people were dying on roads with curves. That's why when some genius takes his tractor out into a field and makes a crop circle in the middle of the night in Nebraska, everybody automatically assumes it was a space alien because it has curves.

"Boys Don't Cry" is about Teena Brandon (Hilary Swank), a woman who thinks she's a man. When she's found out by her "friends", they go crazy. They rape and kill her. This is based on a true story. Teena manages to get a girlfriend in Lana (Chloe Sevigny), who's so desperate to get out of Nebraska that any realization that she's sleeping with another woman bounces off her brain like a four-year-old on a trampoline. Then there's John (Peter Sarsgaard) and Tom (Brendan Sexton III), who freak when they discover Teena is a she not a he. Incidentally, Sevigny has a big old mole on one of her breasts that looks like a third nipple. I didn't need to see this. That's what makeup is for.

"Boys Don't Cry" puts a face on white trash, which is like putting a face on baby seal clubbing. Not exactly "fun for the whole family." When your four-year-old turns to you and asks: "Daddy, why did the white trash people blow the head off the transgendered girl?" I don't know what the right answer is. I don't know why this movie was made, but if it was to emphasize what a bunch of lowlifes Nebraskans are, it wasted my time. I already knew that.

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