(2011)

I checked out this flick solely because I just discovered Chloe Grace Moretz, and having enjoyed her immensely in a variety of films, decided to take a chance on this one only on the basis of her appearing in it. Hick follows one Luli (Moretz), a young teen from a severely dysfunctional family; both parents run off on her, so she decides to hitchhike to Las Vegas. The film follows her adventures along the way. Trouble is, she only runs into a few people on the road: Eddie (Eddie Tremayne), a modern-day cowboy pool hustler whos fairly shady, and Glenda (Blake Lively), who smokes pink cigarettes and is completely shady. Everywhere she goes she seems to run into these two, and while Glenda sort of looks out for her, its hard to get a bead on just what Eddie wants, until, much later in the film, she wakes up tied to a bed in a remote cabin, and by then, its pretty obvious. Ive read some people making an argument for this film that it shows Lulis resilience or her ability to think herself out of a tight scrape, but really all that happens in Hick is that a highly-sexualized young teen (were talking a serious Lolita fetish here) is too stupid to realize that people in general take advantage of you, and only meets the very worst kind of people in the world, over and over again. Theres no real lesson learned here close to the climax, Luli almost returns home; its just a string of unpleasant encounters with unpleasant people that nearly ends in prostitution? White slavery? Its hard to say for sure what unseemly fate Eddie has in mind for her, but it isnt good. Moretz is good, but she plays essentially the same role (with more clothes on) in the far better Texas Killing Fields, hailing from essentially the same drunken broken home. Redmayne he turns in a good performance despite his character being a real douche; Livelys too flashy for my tastes as Glenda, but that could be direction rather than any acting choices she made. I think were supposed to like Glenda, but I didnt, really. Alec Baldwin has a small cameo at the end, and though hes barely there, hes excellent. Theres no real reason to see this film other than to ogle Moretz, which is creepy in an of itself (I think shes all of fifteen). Its funny, in a way, that I stayed away from Kick-Ass for two years for concerns about the sexualization of Moretzs character there, and here, thats the core conceit of the film. Anyway I wasted a hundred minutes of my life on this crap, dont you make the same mistake. September 11, 2012

Hick