Gimme Shelter Review | Semi-Evangelical Teen Pregnancy Melodrama Manages Very Little Genuine Emotion
Orlando Lens
It's not easy to so thoroughly dislike a movie like Gimme Shelter. It should be a lovely, uplifting experience. It's about a girl overcoming the odds to make her life better. There's repaired relationships, honest charity, and recognizable actors with honest talent. Given the formula, Gimme Shelter should be no less than mediocre. However, no amount of positives can save a film from the technical and writing mistakes that plague Gimme Shelter.
There's a term for melodramatic teen-centered cautionary tales: "after-school special." The term comes from a genre of television that has mostly dissipated. These made-for-TV movies were meant to teach young viewers to be wary of the dangers that faced them: drugs, sex, depression, and table-top devil-worshiping role-playing games. The genre has a history of proselytizing, or at the very least conservative thinking. That's not inherently a knock on it, but these types of shows are so heavy-handed and with such low production value that they are often eminently mockable. The tone-deafness of the presentation destroy any positive message the program might have. Gimme Shelter is not quite at the level of made-for-TV after-school special, but it's distressingly close.
By Nicholas Ware
There's a term for melodramatic teen-centered cautionary tales: "after-school special." The term comes from a genre of television that has mostly dissipated. These made-for-TV movies were meant to teach young viewers to be wary of the dangers that faced them: drugs, sex, depression, and table-top devil-worshiping role-playing games. The genre has a history of proselytizing, or at the very least conservative thinking. That's not inherently a knock on it, but these types of shows are so heavy-handed and with such low production value that they are often eminently mockable. The tone-deafness of the presentation destroy any positive message the program might have. Gimme Shelter is not quite at the level of made-for-TV after-school special, but it's distressingly close.
The movie stars ex-Disney Queen Vanessa Hudgens as Apple Bailey, a teen with an abusive relationship with her mother who runs away to find her respectable upper-middle-class father and happens to be pregnant when doing so. I'm sure that Hudgens saw the role as a meaty, "adult" transition into real acting--a chance to move into the Jodie-Foster-in-The-Accused part of her career. The problem is that she simply doesn't have the chops. Hudgens is brave to be made so ugly for the film--she's not a natural beauty but her elfin cuteness is completely erased under facial blemishes, disheveled hair, and formless, dirty hoodies. But that braveness gets no pay-off. Hudgens has two or three big speeches in the film and delivers them with all the conviction of a junior high production of Bye Bye Birdie. She's a child star who can only relate to the material in theory, and she obviously doesn't have enough training, experience, or natural talent to truly connect to the heroine.
Not that the film would have done Hudgens any favors even if she brought an A game. After all, the film wastes verified talents James Earl Jones (as a kindly priest who is nice enough to pretty much just say the film's themes in each of his scenes; bad writing 101) and Rosario Dawson (her browned-over teeth make-up overshadows the shrieky, flat Welfare Queen character that is written to be Apple's mother). Brendan Frasier fails to emote in any scene he appears in, but in the case of Gimme Shelter phoning it in might have been the best choice: committing to melodrama ends up being mincing, saccharine, and loathsome. The script has all sorts of problems--no character in any of the characters, just broadly drawn cartoons--and the editing makes keeping track of time nearly impossible. Did the film take place over a year? Two? Six months? Impossible to tell.
The propaganda at the heart of Gimme Shelter is, of course, its pro-life message. Spoiler alert: Apple has her baby and her world is better because of it. Perhaps the best praise for the movie is that it doesn't beat us over the head with this message--it prefers the more vague and insulting "God has a plan" route--but it's hard not to see this film as evangelical even though it tries hard to look like a traditional drama. Again, just because a film is evangelical doesn't mean it's bad, but Gimme Shelter is. The movie makes too many inexplicable or amateurish choices--the title refers to a Rolling Stones song for seemingly no reason--to be anything but.
Gimme Shelter opens today at Regal Winter Park, Regal Waterford, AMC Altamonte, and AMC Downtown Disney. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic material involving mistreatment, some drug content, violence and language - all concerning teens. Run time 2 hours.