"Kids" (1995) - Movie Review

“Tin Drum” got axed and murdered by this reviewer for employing a young kid in an explicit sexual act. It is time for “Kids”, which uses multiple teenagers and younger kids into contents which shocks not alone on the intended motive of the director Larry Clark on how the kids today are involved in debauchery acting haphazard or ignorant about the consequences but how manipulative and hypocritical it becomes to creep the living hell out of us.

Beside that fact, Clark uses actors unknown and they have the talent for giving exactly what he has demanded. The opening scene is how a teenager named Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick) deflowers a twelve year old girl (Sarah Henderson), wooing and deceiving her. He comes out proud and boasts about his victory over one another virgin to his friend Casper (Late Justin Pierce). We come to know through the conversations that Telly’s motto is to sleep with as many virgins as possible.

They go to their friend’s house wherein shabbiness gets a new definition and shock factor ramps up to new levels. But interesting thing happens, the boys bedraggling in the drug fest discuss in detailed fashion on their sexual encounters. At this point of time, we are shown a similar discussion in parallel among girls who take their fair share in graphic sexual experiences. Clark gave me hope of some thing is happening, an open forum for discussion. Instead of that the film deviates into the non-stop spat of the kids involving in open exploration of their sexuality.

Larry Clark wants us to provide the mid 90’s and may be the current trend of the cool factor and the curiosity of sex paving way into deadly effects and how it manifests into a cycle which is scary. What it becomes out of it is the means becomes the infectious disease. In the process of the higher prospect and motive, it succumbs in to the pits which it revealed not to get trapped. There is Ruby (very young Rosario Dawson) and from the vivid discussion with her friends tells us that she is vehemently sexually active while her Jenny (Chloe Sevigny) has slept with only one boy, Telly. The film again gave me some hope when Ruby goes for their STD medical test and Jenny for moral support tags along. Soon the results are out and Ruby comes clean but Jenny tests positive for HIV. She is devastated and wants to find Telly while he is onto his next hunt, a thirteen year old girl named Darcy (Yakira Peguero). There is a friendly encounter with a cab driver (Joseph Knopfelmacher) who is the only wise personality in the film.

I constantly pinched the brain to wake up from the moral stand I was taking on. The tone and documentary styled film is showing the truthfulness of the society with kids’ misguided sexuality resulting into. I am hundred percent with the message and intent the film carries on but the method it take on to show it steps over the line. The exact point what the film makes becomes self incriminating. To show a war film and its ill effect, one has to show the gore and killings to make a point, to show an emotional drama a film has to push the limits for putting the audience in a similar scenario and “Kids” does that. The difference is that in the others there are adults who even in their mistake have some awareness of their intent and participation. The kids in this film may have the idea of what they are doing but are they in that age of maturity to not regret this decision? And couple of scene would have sufficed the film’s purpose but it becomes an orgy and in a creepy way the movie starts to celebrate it. It crawls into the den it is warning the parents and the upcoming kids to watch out for.

It is a bold experiment gone wrong. When I finished watching “Requiem for a Dream”, there is the sickness in the stomach on the tortures these characters have put themselves in. Drug addiction strips the skins of carelessness and enjoyable hallucination. After fifteen minutes in to “Kids”, I got the same message of misconceived sexual concepts by the adolescence and how the children need to be educated on those. But “Kids” did not stop there and extended another hour and fifteen minutes. I would suggest “Requiem for a Dream” but not “Kids”. It loses its purpose and takes it wild. It fails as a responsible film it claims to be in the making.