Hannah Peters, of Logan Park High School, reviews Boy, directed by Taika Waititi.
The year is 1984. Michael Jackson's Thriller has made it to the top of the charts, a feed of fish and chips is still something that plenty of Kiwi kids experience on a Friday night, and a cool car with cool paint is pretty much the means for popularity in this small town.
The main character, called Boy has created a myth that evolves around his long-absent dad. Except, of course, none of it is true.
What is obvious to everyone around Boy, and to us in the audience, is that Alamein senior is a pot-smoking, drop-kick with convictions such as petty theft, and self delusion has been what has kept him morbidly sane for all the years since he left his whanau.
Boy manages to keep this out of his mind for a while, because his own story of the life he never had plays in his head, but everything goes wrong when Boy realizses just what his father really is, and what he will never be.
The film is based around a few weeks of Boy's life. Having his father come back and watching his brother pretending that he has super powers, Boy draws you in.
During the course of a week or two, Alamein, Boy and Boy's younger brother, Rocky, are going to get to know each other a lot better.
And that, really, is the climax of this wonderful little film, set in and around the beautiful Waihau Bay, on the East Coast, where whanau and love keeps the people together.
Boy and Alamein do start to bond, but as his pot-smoking, in-another-world father begins to talk nonsense, Boy has to face the reality of his life.
Boy knows that nothing will get better if his dad sticks around.
This story is a heartfelt, warm, and loving movie to encounter and I give it a big thumbs up.
- Hannah Peters is a Year 13 student at Logan Park High School
