Jamesy Boy

The screenplay by Lane Shadgett and director Trevor White relies far too much on telling rather than showing.

Jamesy Boy has its heart in the right place, and first-time director Trevor White shows some skill with actors, but the film lacks a compelling reason to exist, except perhaps as a public-service announcement.

The poems — and the film as a whole — fail to flesh James out as a whole and complicated human being worth rooting for.

Every word of the story may be true, and if it happened to someone you knew, you'd be captivated. In Jamesy Boy, though, it's hard to see why we should care.

Director Trevor White frames the former teen gang member's life as an uplifting coming-of-age prison drama that feels entirely disconnected from the realities of incarceration.

The movie adds up to little more than an interminable bildungsroman, sunk early and often by the desperately miscast Spencer Lofranco.

I have always been a huge fan of real life drama, because lets face it, some of this stuff you just can't make up. Even the best writers couldn't imagine some of the things these people have had to endure, and it makes for some amazing films. On the otherside of that, there are other stories, which just aren't that unique or interesting, and in my opinion really don't warrent a full length feature film, Jamesy Boy is an example of this. James (Spencer Lofranco) is your typical rebellious kid from a single parent home. He's not poor and has a lot of opportunities, but for whatever reason, he's turned to drugs and crime. He's living the gangsta life on the streets until the inevitable happens, and he winds up in jail. Once there, James witnesses a crime, and meets a man who helps him unlock a talent he never knew he had, but will James turn to the straight and narrow or will his friends pull him back into his old life? This is a true story and newcomer Spencer Lofranco was fantastic, but haven't we seen stories like this done over and over again? To be honest the only reason I kept watching it was to see which path James chose after prison. I wanted to see how his life turned out, but either way, we've seen films like this many times before and Jamesy Boy doesn't stand out in any type of significant way. If you want to do a film that has been done over and over again, true story or not, there has to be something about it that makes it stand out from the pack, and that doesn't happen here. The bottom line, Jamesy Boy is decent and it's fine if you're just looking to kill a couple of hours. It features a pretty good up and coming young talent and some old familiar faces, but beyond that, there's nothing really special about it.