The Outsiders

Maybe if I’d seen it when I younger, it would hit different. The struggle to fit in, and not wanting to settle for the role society has cast for you. Maybe those themes would resonate better. But as a 45 year old man, all I can see is a narcissistic Boomer  directing a masturbatory wannabe 50’s family epic in the vein of East Of Eden about the good ol’ days. The split diopter shots, the life or death stakes of two high school cliques, the idea of “the wrong side of town”, greasers, drive ins, burger joints, the swelling orchestral music … it’s so melodramatic and covered in Boomer nostalgia. It’s corny. Say what you will about a movie like Porky’s, it KNOWS it’s hazy, wishful recollections of life in the 50’s is candy-coated bullshit and steers into the skid. The Outsiders honestly, genuinely believed these fantasies were a reality. And the story isn’t presented as an A to B arc so much as a series of interlocking vignettes, which makes the movie feel twice as long as it is. If it weren’t for the technical aspects of this movie — lovely cinematography and shot composition, some fun if hammy acting from a murderer’s row of actors — this would be lower. It’s tired, tedious, and has nothing to say beyond a Grampa Simpson-level remembrance of times that never happened.