FOREVERLAND (Max McGuire). 93 minutes. Opens Friday (June 15). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NN
Foreverland is a road movie about a young man with cystic fibrosis who confronts his own mortality on a redemptive drive from BC to Mexico. And here’s the big selling point: director/co-writer Max McGuire is also a young man with cystic fibrosis.
At 21, Will Rankin (Chloe’s Max Thieriot) spends a lot of time thinking about death when his friend Bobby dies and asks Will to deliver his ashes to a priest at a Mexican shrine, he winds up learning a lot about himself.
McGuire and screenwriter Shawn Riopelle lean heavily on dramatic clichés like Will’s jokey relationship with an empathetic funeral director (Matt Frewer). And Laurence Leboeuf, who plays bright-eyed love interest Hannah, is introduced so clumsily I spent an hour thinking she was the late Bobby’s girlfriend rather than his sister.
It’s a central tenet of storytelling that authors write what they know, and it’s admirable that McGuire has made a movie that uses CF as one element of his protagonist’s character rather than defining him entirely by the condition.
But Foreverland falls down on so many other levels, I can’t recommend it.
