Jo's Boy (2010)
Grandson of a legendary rugby player, son of a legendary rugby player, and he himself a legendary rugby player, Jo Canavero raises his only son, Tom, in a small village in the Tarn region. To the great displeasure of Jo, thirteen-year-old Tom is as good at math as he is useless on the rugby field. For a Canavero, the legend can't stop there, even if it means setting up a rugby team specifically for Tom, despite the wishes of the whole village and of Tom himself.
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For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Okay, it's the guy's first movie as a director so let's cut him some slack. He's written six including the popular Camping, which just happened to star Gerard Lanvin so it's worth a supposition that the two men hit it off and Lanvin agreed to lend his name - which is considerable in France, though not perhaps as much here, which is a pity as he really is a fine actor - to Gullard's directing debut. This is commonplace in France, notably in the case of Costa-Gavros whose first directing job Compartiment tuers got a terrific boost when both Simone Signoret and Yves Montand agreed to appear in it, and whilst I'm not suggesting for one moment that Gullard is another Costa-Gavros he has made a decent, feel-good movie which is well acted and certainly entertains though it does, of course, remain to be seen how well he follows it up.
I did not go to see this film when it was released, one year ago. I already knew it was not for me, not for my taste. It was aired on TV last month, and I finally decided to watch it. OK, it is a cute little movie about hope, friendship and forever good feelings. How the hell anyone could say any harm about such a film?Full of clichés, everything is predictable but it may be relaxing for anyone who wants to forget daily stress and problems. Actors are pretty generous, as their own characters in this perhaps cheesy - but not lousy - feature for folks in love with human relationship full of faith, and also sport. Rugby, in this case.A friends' film, made not only for money, even a child could feel it.
The premise of the movie is the relationship between a father and son and how rugby supposedly brings them together. There are several movies which have used sports to bring out the complexity of human relationships. This movie fails completely. The script has huge holes, the characterization is poor, the acting is lousy and trite. The director invests no time to either fleshing out the characters or the relationship between the father and son. The Director seems to have been sleep walking during the making of the movie. Most of the actors do the same. I saw it on a flight hoping that a French movie would be better than some of the Hollywood movies on offer. It was a waste of time. Avoid it