Fat Girls

Big-Hearted and often quite funny if crudely made, Fat Girls cleverly subverts the clichés of high school comedies to serve an autobiographical story about an overweight gay teen in a small Texas town.

Christian infuses this familiar story with gentle empathy, which goes a long way in balancing out the more amateurish choices.

Without insight, memorable dialogue or interesting characters, Fat Girls quickly wears thin.

This film goes to some lengths not to be another high-school movie, which means prom stinks and no one can sing. Given Fat Girls' honesty, and its delicately drawn examples of social hopelessness, the sudden, sugary, puzzling finale feels out of character. It's as though the film forgot how to talk to us.

Wins no points for delicacy. Still, it does score some laughs.

In the words of his own character, this young filmmaker hasn't found his "inner fat girl."

Ends up stranded between two concepts, either of which might have yielded a more satisfying film.