Day 74 -- The Chaperone

Released: February 18th, 2011

Starring: Paul Levesque, Ariel Winter, Kevin Corrigan, Yeardley Smith, Annabeth Gish
  
Writer/Director: S.J. Roth/Stephen Herek

Description: An ex-con on the run from his criminal past, hides out from those he ratted on by chaperoning a field trip to New Orleans.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

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After watching "the movie that shall not be named", anything would look like "Gone with the Wind". It's hard to critique a kids movie because they realistically make no effort to be a classic movie. They just want to be entertaining, and interest a kid enough that they force their parents to buy the DVD. This is how the producers make back their money.

"The Chaperone" falls just short of being a solid kid's adventure movies. The story of a father who's trying to reconnect with his kid after being away for a while is good enough to get any kid to watch it. Add in a goofy field trip, adolescent jokes, and well done action set pieces and this movie should have been a hit among the middle school sect. But its ending was anti-climatic and was too rushed to be memorable. 

The performances weren't all that bad. Levesque as Ray-Ray was actually good in the emotional scenes, and great in the action scenes. And Ariel Winter of Modern Family, who played Ray's estranged daughter, was a bit over matched at times, but knew how to play the sassy moments and she made them believable. The work of these two together needed to be the heart of the film, but their chemistry wasn't strong enough to believe the change of heart that Ray's daughter had toward him. It was too convenient and happened over the span of one scene.

This failure in story telling shouldn't have been much of a surprise since the writing was generic at best. The punchlines were way too telegraphed to be funny, and the final scene erased any consequences that should have occurred. But I guess the need to have a happily ever after in kid's movies kept this from having a strong and true ending. 

"The Chaperone" is an okay kid's film that I wouldn't stop my kid from watching. There's enough legitimate acting in this movie for it to be a passable film, but the plot and story had so much potential. Winter is going to be a good comedic actress, but she needs to learn nuance. Something her peer, Chloe Moretz, has already mastered. She has time, but has to make sure she doesn't fall into the bad habits that make the Disney channel actresses hard to watch. One of the more encouraging things was that, Levesque has the potential to follow in Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's footsteps as a solid action and kid's movie actor, but lacks Johnson's charisma to be in a comedy.

Rating: 4.5/10 -- Probably would of loved this as a 10-year-old who was really into wrestling. Good supporting cast allows this film to be adequate.