Alicia I love this movie so much

AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

jonmeta Phrases like "this movie will drive the Religious Right nuts" get a lot of mileage. A number of reviewers have said it about "Skipped Parts". So I'm wondering what the Religious Right really would think of this film if they examined it seriously.First, the storyline suggests that sex education for kids is not a good thing and may have unwanted consequences. The women who give the advice, Lydia and Delores, are pretty unsympathetic characters when they're talking to the adolescents. Are we meant to applaud the way they give explicit details (complete with taco shell, like a silly pantomime of a sex ed class) to 14-year-olds, while withholding the key point of where this might lead? I don't think so, because their recklessness is part of a commonplace theme that runs through the film - the kids are more sensible than the adults - and also because we're shown those consequences later. Lydia and Delores might as well give Sam and Maurey a hand grenade and tell them to play carefully. So score a point for Religious Right family values here.Second, the film doesn't take the view of abortion that the Religious Right might expect from so called "Hollywood liberals". It doesn't present it as a quick and relatively painless way out of a jam, nor does it do any pulpit pounding about the dark days before Roe v Wade. The film could have made Lydia and Delores into proto-feminist heroes, enlightened before their time, but it didn't. In the story, there are two consequences of visiting the abortion clinic and neither one is a guilt free abortion. So score some big points for "family values".Third, the film ends by affirming the stereotypical woman-man-girl-boy family: the waitress, the Indian, the cheerleader, and the precocious young narrator. Sure, the narrator and the cheerleader have a baby, and the waitress is a grandmother before she's thirty. But unless the Religious Right has recently come out against grandchildren being raised by multi- generational families, I fail to see the problem. So what's there to offend the RR, other than the portrayal of Wyoming natives as rodeo loving illiterates? (And that's only offensive –probably -if you're from Wyoming.) Well, there's the scene where the two young teens face each other in their underwear, saying something like, "I think this is how it's done." It was uncomfortable and strange. But a lot of reviewers found it creepy, and I'm sure not all are card-carrying members of the 700 Club. And it doesn't change the fundamental themes of the story outlined above.Lydia's loose morals and rebelliousness are sure to offend the Religious Right, right? Yes, because her actions are *meant* to be offensive: her irresponsible talk, her rambling, self- indulgent rudeness to the welcome lady, her inability to do a stick of work, her cruelty to a man who's much too good for her. The RR is offended and so is everyone else. So maybe, in the movies, actions shouldn't always be judged desirable if they offend conservative Christians. Even the RR is sometimes offended by what's actually offensive. But I digress. The good news is that, as in all traditional morality tales, Lydia comes round in the end. She gets a job, declares independence (rather than just rebellion) from her father, and settles down with a man who loves her. Sure, she's white and he's Native American, but not even the film's illiterate Wyomians are offended by that. That leaves just one theme that seems custom made to offend conservative religious types. The film threatens to undermine parental authority and traditional family values by making the kids more sensible and moral than the adults. In fact, the grown ups are mostly first class hypocrites, as revealed especially in the confrontation at the abortion clinic. Sam, on the other hand, is an example of responsibility and kindness. But wait. I think I've read that somewhere before. Something about religious leaders being blind Pharisees and children being the kingdom of heaven. Yes, that definitely sounds like a deliberate attempt to offend the Religious Right.

Matt Hooban A book that makes you fall completely head-over-heels for its main character because of his wit and self-deprecating charm should not result in a movie that conjures the same character as an uneven, somewhat arrogant pest. I can accept that the film won't be able to transport the viewer the way the words on the page can, but the sad part is that this movie never even comes close.In the book, Sam Callahan is heartwarming. He's a kid you want to get to know. You want to reassure him that it's okay to be this awkward when you're 13, and that everyone's adolescence (or most people's, anyway) are miserable. You laugh when he cracks a joke or lets you in on one of his precocious personal witticisms. You're moved when he talks about the Kennedy assassination from an intelligent but still hopelessly naive point of view. He eases the shock of sexual experimentation and of Maury's teenage pregnancy and takes you right into the reality of dealing with the consequences - of kids and adults thrown into circumstances that would make anyone grow up.But maybe it's too tall an order for film. Maybe the topics are too sensitive and the inner monologue is too hard to convey. Isn't it almost always the case that the movie adaptations of books fall on their faces to some extent? Sure.The problem is that this movie is still terrible. It hits so far away from what made the book enjoyable that you have to be a little bit irritated at the filmmakers for even trying.My advice if you're thinking about renting/buying this is to put your money away and read this book. (I got it from Netflix, and I seriously considered scratching the words "read the book" into the back of the DVD before I sent it back.) The book will give you a week of solid enjoyment, and that beats two hours of confusion and nausea pretty much any day.

Pepper Anne I thought the modern take on Romeo & Juliet in the Paul Sorvino/Lanie Kazan comedy 'Is Love All There Is' was the most ridiculous tale of young kids in love gone overboard that I had ever seen. That was, of course, until I watched Skipped Parts. Skipped Parts is the story of a 'bohemian' type of mother and son (at least by the rural Southwestern mid 60s standards) who basically turn their town's conventions upside down to a heavy degree. Lydia, a fantastic part played well by Jennifer Jason Leigh (it is a part reminiscent of her role as the punchy undercover journalist in 'The Hudsucker Proxy'), is kicked out of her North Carolina home where she lived with her overbearing, strict father in order to avoid embarrassment during his Senate campaign. Lydia is hanging by a thin string, already proved to be ill equipped to deal with responsibility. Thus, her teen son, is more of an equal, and an intelligent one to make up for the lack of parenting on Lydia's part.Together, they arrive in a small, 'proper' town in Wyoming, both hopelessly lost and terribly out of place, of course, given their nature. But this story and the two's effect on the town are more like an unfocused rebellion. That in the face of such staunch idiocy and conservatism by the town, Lydia and her son Sam (Bug Hall) are just going to to completely turn the town around, whether on purpose or by accident. With no direction, but just to rebel. The product is something even more out-of-wack than the small town was prior to their arrival, just in the opposite manner, so to speak. Sam befriends a pristine classmate, played by a very young Micha Barton. The two fourteen year olds develop more than just a 'show me yours and I'll show you mine' interest in sex. And with Lydia and her zany friend's encouragement, they do some experimenting. This is weird in the first place. Maybe not if we weren't such a sexual-conscious culture when it came to teenagers, but we are. Weird even for me. But, the two teenagers, who seem to like this experimentation, don't know when to give up, especially considering Lydia's warnings that once the girl gets her period, it's over. Well, I guess it's no surprise why this movie never hit mainstream release, or at least widespread mainstream release, considering the field day the religious right would have with this movie (and the book on which it's based?), with such young kids going for sex, and on top of everything else, a fourteen year old getting pregnant. And on top of that, keeping the baby. Meanwhile, we still see Sam as just a child. With his boyish fantasies about the movie star on screen and the like. How is it anyone thought they'd be capable of raising a child? How is it these kids thought so? The situation is taken way too lightly, and that's hard to get past.Other events in the town set off more chaos, possibly all started by the 'sex games' that Sam and his friend endure. But, that is more tolerable in mainstream American movies. The seemingly perfect wife having an affair and an abortion; the irresponsible mother being unable to commit and all of that. It's typical American fare, even in comedies. But somehow, I just can't get past how bizarre and how far things go between Sam and Maurey (Barton). It is an entirely strange, and more than not, an unbelievable situation. I think they went a little far with the intentions of showing how two 'liberated' people can have such a domino effect on such a tight-fisted town, for good or for worse.

pageiv To best review this movie, it is improtant to review what happened in the movie.A 14-yr old boy has questions about sex, good, most do. He has a nocturnal emissions and asks his mom what happened, ok, I'm sure he was scared, then his mom touches, then smells, then tastes, his emission. That is about the level this movie is on.Within this movie two 14-yr olds have "exploration" sex. Condoned, and instructed (by use of a taco shell), by the boy's mother and the girl's aunt. The girl gets pregnant, the boy's mom drives her to an abortion clinic, there she sees her mom and history teacher so she leaves. At the end of the movie the girl's mother is in an insane asylum. Which is where the makers, and writer of this movie belong. The girl moves in with the boy and his mother and her lover, with her baby. The two 14-yr olds are shown as a happy couple raising a baby, he doing his writing, and she cheerleading. Sure, what about the endless crying baby? The moral of this movie is how "evil" those conservatives are that say "sex should wait" and do evil things like force their kids to act right. By doing what you want things may go bad, like being pregnant at 14, but things will always work out.