(originally posted in the 'Spout Mavens' discussion board, but I think it was supposed to be posted here, so have copied it here)
I'm not sure how I am expected to respond to this movie. I received it in the mail earlier in the week, and read on the outside of the package about how this was based on a book/memoir that was later exposed as a fraud. The description didn't encourage my interest much (it certainly doesn't sound like the 'feel good hit of the summer', that's for sure), but I gave it a try nonetheless. My first session lasted about a half an hour into the film. If I'm supposed to be horrified by the abuse this child endures, then it isn't working, because I've been warned ahead of time that it is a fabrication. Perhaps the actors and story will overcome that and draw me in. Not much luck there either. The 'mother' character does nothing but inspire incredulence alternating with revulsion, while the 'child' is one minute pitiful and the other minute annoying and tiresome. A couple nights later I forced myself into another session with the film, where we get to meet the fundamentalist grandfather (played with usual stony indifference by Peter Fonda), and the only laugh out loud moment of the film occurs (which so far, has been the only highlight of the film), where the child mishears "psalm" and brags that he knows some "songs", and proceeds to do a hilarious rendition of the Sex Pistols "Anarchy in the U.K." complete with loogie on the floor. Then the mother came back into the picture and I groaned aloud, and prepared for another tedious 'life on the edge' tableau. I got as far as the boy beginning to cross dress and seduce the mother's boyfriend, and it lost me again. I may return to finish this off, but don't hold your breath. Its a bad sign, when, after an hour into a movie, you don't really care how it ends. (and apparently I didn't even get to Marilyn Manson, a pity, I'm sure)