Terri: movie review
Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is a very overweight sad sack who lives with his addled uncle and regularly shows up at high school wearing pajamas. He endures his classmates鈥� taunts with world-weary aplomb and seems older than his age.
鈥淭erri鈥� is about how, with the help of an 鈥渦nderstanding鈥� vice principal, Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), this kid gradually opens up. To my way of seeing, though, Terri doesn鈥檛 open up much more than a peep. Wysocki acts in varying shades of drabness. Worse, director Azazel Jacobs and screenwriter Patrick deWitt seem to think this drabness is a mark of humanity.
The film鈥檚 high school atmosphere is fairly generic, although a wiggy friend of Terri鈥檚, Chad (Bridger Zadina), is amusing (and might have had a better time of it in a John Hughes film). A scene between Terri, Chad, and Heather (Olivia Crocicchia), the pretty classmate who warms to Terri when he unexpectedly takes her side in a school disciplinary action, is the best thing in the movie. It鈥檚 full of the tingle and jitters of (very mild) adolescent sexual byplay.
Reilly does well with his tenderhearted martinet routine, but the film makes him out to be as harried in his own way as the kids he鈥檚 trying to help. He becomes Terri鈥檚 friend 鈥� as opposed to friend/therapist. From a psychological standpoint, this is murky territory but Jacobs presents it as the height of enlightenment 鈥� a confluence of two damaged souls. At least 鈥�Good Will Hunting,鈥� another movie that played this game, wasn鈥檛 blah. Grade: C (Unrated.)
