The Boy with Green Hair (1948)

(NOTE: I’m gonna spoil some stuff, so…yeah. Read at your own risk, or whatever. This movie doesn’t even deserve a formal note) A common misconception among those who don’t study the art of film is that film nerds will praise any movie made before the 60s, or the 70s, or whatever. You know what I mean. There is a reason that this is a misconception. Because, just solely due to the fact that a movie is old, doesn’t mean that it is good. And The Boy with Green Hair is not a good movie. It is a dumb little movie. And I do not like those dumb little movies. I like smart movies. A movie doesn’t have to be amazingly genius in order to be good. It just needs to have a couple people who care about the project working on it. And here, we have nothing. Just lazy, boring filmmaking. I didn’t know that these lazy of filmmakers were around before the days of Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, Sean McNamara, or Ewe Boll. The film’s plot is an earnest one, much less to me than to others. A boy, whose family was ravished by war, finds out that his parents, or one of his parents, or whatever, had died in the war. So, 40 minutes (half-way) into the film, he decides to dye his hair green. And then people begin to mildly get concerned. And somehow, that leads to the fact that this child’s life is ruined by the sheer fact that he has green hair. Even as I’m writing this, I don’t understand any reason how this film could be even called good. The basic message in the film, that war is bad, is a good one, but that doesn’t really matter when it’s just bogged down by a useless story and terrible acting, does it? I don’t think so. A lot of people will probably disagree with me on this, and I say this kindly: a lot of people do not care about the quality of the film, just the message. Please, I ask of you, do not take this in a negative manner. I assume you will. I mean no harm. But I can back this up with an example. I was talking to a woman beside a Redbox machine (very useful, if you can get to one), I will not say who, but we were talking about some of the selections. I was recommending a few films, and then we started talking about the movie Soul Surfer. I told her the exact same thing that I told her in my review: that I thought that is was not a very well-made film. It was unnecessary. This woman then explained to me how I was wrong in judging the film. She told me that it was about the girl overcoming the shark attack, and not just a film for your entertainment. I KNOW THAT! And you have no right to tell me what I’m doing wrong in doing something that I have been doing since I was nine years old. Is that to say that I don’t have things I need to learn? No. I have things I need to learn. I just don’t want to listen to you tell a published reviewer of film how to do his job. I’m really sorry, I just had to get that off of my chest.
1.5/10