Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I saw this on Netflix, which offered only the very briefest of descriptions, so I had no idea what to expect. But since Netflix had it listed in the LGBT category, I did at least expect a gay-ish theme. But the repeated and somewhat heavy-handed references early in the film to evangelical Christianity (citing of Biblical verses, the prayer at the funeral, the lyrics of the overtly evangelical hymn in the sound track) left me very confused. I am left with the impression of a screenwriter who is gay but also a devout evangelical Christian, a juxtaposition that I personally find troubling. Still, I tried to give the film some benefit of doubt. I was not successful. The writing was uneven and at times very unrealistic, especially in the way Nick's social abilities ... as a person with Asperger's ... vacillated across a wide range. It was as though he suddenly stopped having Asperger's when the writer/director needed him to be able to emote "normally."And the characters seemed too contrived. Wealthy family with domineering and controlling father, submissive pill-popping mother, "perfect" elder son, challenged younger son. It was all too transparent. But the composition of the boys' poker group! One wealthy white with a prestige car, one probable Latino with a mother who worked as a maid, one black guy who looked like he was channeling Pharrell, and one South Asian. It was like a little United Nations! And it seemed totally artificial. The acting was not great, either. I love both BD Wong and Joan Chen, but neither performance impressed me. But this may be due to the limitations of the material with which they had to work. The boys (Poker Group plus Nick) were very unevenly matched, from Justin Martin's downright bad acting to Gregg Sulkin's roller-coaster of scene-by-scene good-to-bad-to-good-again. Call me crazy, but this entire film might have worked better if a) the overt references to evangelical Christianity were removed and b) the setting were shifted from the wealthy suburbs of LA to a working class neighborhood in middle America.

This independent production is a real sleeper and should be required viewing for young gay teens. Coming out is a tricky thing and every single individual LGBT person has a different family dynamic to deal with.In this case Harry Shrum feels he can't do it at least until he's out of the house and on his own away from strict Christian parents Joan Chen and B.D. Wong. Shrum feels he also must stay to take care of his younger brother Booboo Stewart who has Asperger's Syndrome and doesn't really socialize well.But Shrum is killed by a hit and run driver early on in the film and the rest of the film is how his family and friends deal with his passing. The focus is on Stewart who looked up to his big brother as his protector in this world. Everyone learns about Shrum's sexual orientation after his demise and the family is hit hard.Especially Stewart who as an Asperger's individual commits things to heart and it's hard for him to unlearn what he's been taught to think about homosexuality. Harder still to learn that Shrum's lover was his alleged heterosexual womanizer Gregg Sulkin.In the old days what Sulkin did with peers of the female gender was use them as 'beards'. That was an expression for women who hung out with closeted gay men so no one would suspect. Sulkin also comes out and his family dynamic is quite different from Shrum's and Stewart's.Watching this with Disney actors Stewart and Sulkin I can just see the American Family Association having yet another conniption. But both deliver fine performances.Recommended highly for gay teen audiences.

The idea of the "perfect" older son dying and leaving the parents and friends with the supposedly less than perfect second son, is hardly original … Stand by Me, for example, and the sibling rivalries in various James Dean movies. Having the second son burdened with a genuine disability is probably not that common. Having the younger disabled son cope with the posthumous outing of the older son as gay is, I'm pretty certain, a unique approach to the often told tale of a teenager coming out. The story concept is the best thing about White Frog and the result has failed to capitalize on the potential.The attempt to link the tale of the Vietnamese coconut frog to the character(s) in this movie seems a bit of a stretch … possibly a (failed) attempt to introduce an intellectual flavor of the inscrutable, exotic Orient to a movie that is really about a bunch of upper middle class Americans. Since none of the cast looks especially Vietnamese, the connection is even more tenuous. Maybe to some eyes "they" all look alike.Booboo and especially the actors who played the friends and secret lover of Chaz were sufficiently charming to make the movie enjoyable … the rest of the characters, not so much. Through most of the movie the parents were annoying and heavy handed caricatures of parents behaving badly. The therapist who talked to Nick seemed to have modeled her character after a nagging Jewish or Asian grandmother who practices no-nonsense tough love. It didn't come across very well.The occasional setting and final scenes in a community center run by a lesbian, funded at start-up in part by the deceased Chaz and whose members are oddly supportive for Nick, who they couldn't have known very well, was a little too much like something out of an old Judy Garland. Mickey Rooney movie … or even worse, an episode of Glee.There were PC messages aplenty, the main one being that everyone should accept himself and others as they are, something that most young people are portrayed as being better at than the anal-retentive older generation ... although given the amount of catastrophic bullying in schools, that seems a myth. As an Afterschool Special it probably needed to be fairly blunt in making its points. There's a lot to be said, however, for subtlety in plot and performance, largely missing in this movie.Of course people want to be kind when dealing with kids coping with handicaps and sexual identity crises and rites of passage, and I suppose there were a few moments when tears could have been shed. The subject matter sympathy vote aside, this movie was enjoyable due mainly to some of the actors involved but, despite all that it had going for it, it was still a disappointing result.

I actually like Boo Boo Stewart but I didn't like him in this. I understood what the director was trying to do but it seems like he got caught up in trying to create a really dramatic indie film that he didn't know what kind of story he wanted to tell. I realize that each movie has a main plot and many subplots but I had a hard time trying to figure out what the main plot actually was. Some areas of the movie would explore certain topics but then would just skip over them for the rest of the movie. Other points were just unrealistic in my opinion.I understand the BooBoo Stewart's character has Asperger Syndrome but it seemed like he was just being shy the whole time. Maybe I'm just used to seeing Max Burkholder play a child with asperger's on the TV show "Parenthood" that Boo Boo's portrayal was a bit laughable to me. I didn't empathize, I was just really uncomfortable. Anyways, like I said I was confused about what the movie wanted to be about. Was it about the main character coming to terms with trying to live with his condition? Was it about teen boys struggle to be honest with their families about their sexuality? Was it about a young boy breaking free of the expectations of his religious and strict parents? Was it about a family coming to terms with their son's sudden death? Was it about a struggling art center for kids staying afloat when there main contributor dies? Funny thing about it, this movie was about all these things and it made the movie fill so diluted and rushed.I will give a huge kudos to Joan Chen for her performance. She had certain scenes that really touched my heart and I enjoyed her portrayal. I wish there would have been more of build up so I could invest in the characters more. I thought the way the three friends found out that the two guys were gay lovers was so whack and laughable. The ending speech Boo Boo gave at the end was corny and tried too hard to be metaphorically deep. I didn't understand the father's relationship with his wife or kids or his motivation for being an ass hole. I hate when people use religion as a scapegoat as an excuse to not be more creative with homophobic topics as well. Also, that seen between Boo Boo and the homeless people was so unrealistic, I was shocked it even made it in the movie.All in all, this movie had more flaws than I could stand. I watched the whole movie and just wasn't impressed and wanted that last hour back. The director tried to hard to make an emotionally dramatic movie that he forgot to tell a good story, which is usually what a film is supposed to be. Stop worrying about winning film festivals, winning awards and etc. Just tell a good story and everything else will come.