UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.

nickb393 Websters defines exploding as "what happens when an explosion goes off" usually caused by the complex and nuanced relationships between various chemicals and elements. There is nothing complex or nuanced between the relationship explored in Bradley Rust Grey's Exploding Girl. I will go ahead and spoil the plot of this movie, if only to save others from the same fate that I suffered; Ivy (Zoe Kazan) gets dumped by her boyfriend, who we never actually see, but hear his monotonous voice via a series of phone calls (probably because he was playing XBOX or something and didn't want to be concerned with physically appearing in such drivel) and shacks up with her sexually ambiguous platonic friend, Al (Mark Rendell, the scene wrecking wussy brother of Josh Hartnett in 30 Days of Night). Ivy has epilepsy, which i presume is to draw some sympathy for her emotional plight kinda like how the old woman in the notebook had dementia. I personally would have found it more entertaining/believable if she had down syndrome. I feel as though there is a lack of quality roles for actors with down syndrome, and although the meaningless character study of Ivy could hardly be described as quality, it would at least be a step in the right direction for the acceptance of disabled actors. Anyway she has a bit of an epileptic spas out as epileptics do, again this scene didn't really add anything to the narrative, but I could strangely relate to it, as at this point I wished I had gone into uncontrollable spasms and hit my head on something so as not to watch the remainder of this pretentious garbage, but alas it weren't to be. Many of my loyal readers must be wondering, "why didn't you just walk out?" and the short answer is it was valentines day and I was trying to impress a date with my taste in independent cinema. In retrospect i should have just stayed at home and wacked off.Peace

delft_blue I wanted to love this film. In fact, the opening was quite breathtaking with the flashes of sunlight coming in through the car window. I also liked the plot idea of two friends and the possibility they just might be perfect for one another. But, it didn't all come together for me. There was something missing from this film, and the more I think on it, I realize that the only fully-fleshed character was Ivy. Greg, who you never see, is flat and predictable. You only hear him talking to Ivy in broken lies over a cell phone. He's barely explained.Greg's poor treatment of Ivy is supposed to be in stark contrast to Al, who adores Ivy and has known her since eighth grade or something. I got sick early on of the filmmaker pointing out how they seemed to complete each other with their sharing of a milkshake, pizza slice, cigarettes, earphones, and Al's readiness to come home whenever Ivy wanted him to. It was over-the-top, especially when early on a family friend mistakes them for a couple. I disliked how a conversation with Greg was often followed by a caring conversation with Al. I thought I could figure out on my own who the good guy was supposed to be.Everything about Al's character seems to have been created just to highlight how perfect he would be for Ivy. His lack of a back story is troubling. Who is he? Why does he not have a place to stay (or, why was his room rented and because of that, no mention of his parents or why he's in the city for the summer)? I wanted to know more about him! Also, why was epilepsy important in the film? I thought this would be central to the plot and it barely is. Ivy goes for blood work that is never reported on, and during a grand mal seizure the camera is angled so that you see the side of Ivy's arm and Al's back. In closing, though so much is hammered home in terms of how Ivy and Al would be a great couple, a lot of key details are forgotten, or left for the viewer to fill in on her own. You end up ultimately not knowing what this film is trying to say. I left this film caring no more about the characters than I did in the first scene. The filmmaker saturates the story with "look how perfect they are for each other" innuendo, but doesn't quite deliver in terms of other important details. Disappointing.

Turfseer The star of 'The Exploding Girl' is Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan, the legendary director. It helps that Elia Kazan was Zoe's grandfather, as I'm sure it's helped her career. Nonetheless, I understand she's a pretty good actor irregardless of her famous surname. But here, in 'The Exploding Girl' she has virtually nothing to do.'The Exploding Girl' is up for a Spirit Award in the 'John Cassavetes Award' category (features made for under a budget of $500,000). It's similar to another Spirit Award nominee, 'Tiny Furniture', as they are both about a young college-aged female back at home from school, who have both platonic and romantic relationships with young men. Kazan plays Ivy who gets a call from her friend Al, whose parents have just rented his room out, and finds himself with nowhere to stay. The circumstances of this 'mixup' by Al's parents are unclear and the specious explanation provided by the film's writer/director, Bradley Rust Gray, appears nothing more than a weak plot device to place Ivy and Al in close proximity to one another.Al is a sensitive guy but I'm unable to remember much about him. Oh yes, he takes Ivy to a rooftop where pigeons are being bred and there are some nice shots of the platonic couple gazing skyward at a flock of birds (pigeons?) flying in the sky. The rest of the Exploding Girl plot concerns Ivy being dumped by her boyfriend, Greg, who we never see on screen. In fact, the entire Ivy-Greg relationship is depicted through a series of cell phone conversations! One shallow internet poster has asserted that American films focus on plot and Indie films are more like foreign ones—i.e., character driven. In this poster's mind, 'art' films don't have to have much of a plot and the mere presentation of 'sensitive' characters is enough to award accolades to such films as 'The Exploding Girl'. As a fledging screenwriter myself, I can say without hesitation that 'plot' is the most difficult aspect of a screenplay to develop. You can have all the great characters in the world but if you don't have a dynamic, original plot, your film might get off the ground, but it will never soar! I realized that 'The Exploding Girl' was going to be slow-moving after watching the first ten minutes. However, sometimes there are slow-moving films which reward you with a surprising twist at the end. Not so with 'The Exploding Girl'. It's all rather predictable stuff when we discover Ivy and Al holding hands as the screen goes blank and the credits then begin to roll.The film's scenarist appears to be a nice guy and nothing in this film is crude or objectionable. Nonetheless, there simply aren't enough unique plot reversals to prevent us from throwing this film into the proverbial indie trash bin. Perhaps with more life experiences, Mr. Gray may come up with a more dynamic story. Certainly, 'The Exploding Girl' does have a few arresting visual moments. But as long as another weary 'lovesick girl bounces back after being dumped by insensitive boyfriend' plot is thrown our way, this film (and other indies films like it) might be defined in terms of what 'Seinfeld' is supposed to be really about: nothing!

mzimmermann13 I am always grateful to see films like "The Exploding Girl" that rely on an economy of cinematic technique to tell a story that is about very human topics in way that makes the viewer engage. It is eminently visual, as a move should be. Listening to the audio track would leave you with nothing grasp. The lack of explication only intensified the sense of youthful tragedy for things that go unsaid and opportunities missed. There's always a problem for some people about small, personal films like this one: they aren't big, flashy or hair-raising. What this film zeroed in on is the pain and uncertainty of youth, and especially of young love. To that end, it was poignant and dead on.The only real problem I have to make about this film is that the filmmakers got too carried away with street-level camera shots that were willing to allow anything and anybody that intervened between the actors to stay in the shot, which resulted in a couple of overlong shots of blurred-out passersby or their body parts to obscure the characters. Okay, I get it that Ivy was just one more passenger on the train; but the indeterminate dark mass of fellow passenger blocking the shot for 15 or 20 seconds was just plain clunky.