Short Cut Movie Review: Short Term 12

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Teen angst - ouch

Short Term 12 is like an after school special made to resemble a film. It has all the subtlety and nuance of those low-budget programs designed to teach a lesson or draw attention to a common teen problem. I just couldn’t believe I was seeing the same ham-handed approach to a theatrically-released film and actually made some critics’ top ten lists.

Brie Larson plays Grace (seriously, is that the best you could do for a name?), a young woman who works at a group home for troubled teens. Her boyfriend and co-worker (John Gallagher Jr.) is bearded and shaggy and just so perfectly supportive, caring, and nurturing toward this young woman whose troubled past is signaled by the way she picks at her cuticles, or becomes obsessed with a new arrival of a girl who dresses in dark clothing, is standoffish, has obvious daddy issues, and cuts herself. It doesn’t take a great deal of sleuthing to figure out exactly – and I mean precisely – what happened in Grace’s past to make her like this.