I needed to take a shower after watching this film. Its characters are the lowest low that this earth has to provide. They engage in rape, drugs, violence, and crime in order to entertain themselves and because they have nothing else going for them, this is all they live for.
Now a little disclaimer before this review, it’s going to be a rather laid back, and more of a spoiler filled rant/praise of this film, so go grab some popcorn, maybe a soda pop or a vitamin water, whatever tickles your fancy and lets discuss Kids.
So basically Harmony Koire wrote this thing when he was 19. Larry Clark the director asked a few kids in a skate park if they want to act in this film, none of which had prior training. Koirne based the dialogue and actions off of his friends which I assume he no longer hangs out with. He filmed it in Manhattan at a lot of actual parties and skate parks and had the kids interact with kids and just let them do what the script said and see what else happened.
To give a brief description of this plot which is really kind of non-existent: kids walk around Manhattan for a day, one kid is on a quest for robbing a 13 year old of her virginity, and another got aids from the same kid and is looking for him to tell him.
So if that plot doesn’t entice you yet, the following must. So in normal cinema when you have a bad character, something happens back to them along the same proportions, karma if you will. But that doesn’t happen here. “Oh okay Jackson, so they must do something similar to Dazed and Confused where they give important life lessons and philosophes right?” Wrong you fool, the film instead wants the viewer to interpret its meaning for themselves. “Good, great, excellent so the film expects intelligence in the viewer, right?” Right.
I won’t exactly tell you it because the film wants you to have the same self-interpreting viewing that I did. It is not exactly a great payoff for spending an hour and a half with these people that are just really awful, like imagine the biggest waste of space and air in the world, and now make 10 of em’.
The film makes statements about this very issue, and how we as a society must deal with these people and give them something that would make them less like this; good parents, a hobby, schooling, a different environment perhaps? I don’t know, probably but Harmony wasn’t feeling it that day I guess and didn’t tell us squat. As stated earlier, that’s the point, but I don’t know a little guidance couldn’t hurt.
So now we have spent the majority of our time spent with two kids, Telly and Casper. Spoiler alert: the repercussion for their ways is that the two get AIDs. They have no clue but Telly’s ending monologue implies that he will soon learn, and when he does he will be teriyaki trippin because the only thing he loves has been taken away from him.
The soundtrack for this flick is dope, and is the inspiration for Mac Miller’s first mixtape, Kids. It’s aight but not nearly as fire as my mixtape coming 2015, be on the lookout. I don’t understand the use of some music choices, particularly why the morning in Manhattan sequence uses the music it does but whatever, that’s why these people are making movies and I’m in my room writing about the movies they making and shamelessly plugging my mixtape.
“Jesus Christ, what happened?” to this review (when you watch the film you’ll be blown away at my incorporation of this quote). You can watch Kids if you want to, but hey if you don’t then no hard feelings either way. *Drops mic.
