Ken Park

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Renee D Weird movie. Just weird. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member If your childhood and teen years were troubled, you will love the story and psychology behind it. Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Heaps of potential, largely wasted. The lives of a group of skateboarding teens in the city of Visalia, California. I had low expectations for this film. It is directed by Larry Clark, who specialises in gratuitous sex and nudity for shock value, and seems to creepily delight in making films about teenagers. However, the movie started very well with an incredibly powerful opening scene. Having grabbed my attention, Clark and writer Harmony Korine then proceeded to retain it with fairly engaging scene-setting. So far, so good. Everything was set up for a good exposition of modern teen life with a profound ending. However, Clark can't help himself and, as the movie progresses, he starts to throw in the gratuitous sex and nudity he is known for. It is all for shock value and here it is over the top. No wonder this film is so controversial. The explicit scenes cheapen and divert what was shaping up to be a good drama. Instead of a well-thought-out and crafted examination of teen life we have extreme and weird plot developments, just for shock value. It's not all bad though: some of the sub-plots (e.g. the Tate one) remain interesting and the ending is quite powerful and ties the movie together. Overall: better than expected, but disappointing because it could have been great. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Ken Park did not do for me what the likes of Kids, Gummo and Bully did. I didn't feel like there was much of a connection between the characters and the audience compared to Clark's and Korine's previous work. Worth a watch if you are a fan of their films, you may enjoy it more than I did, but for me the other films are more powerful/meaningful. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/18/23 Full Review Audience Member Ken Park is a very provocative film. It has never been released in the U.S. (Due to music licensing issues) and you can be arrested in Australia for trying to screen this film (It's still banned there). The story follows the dysfunctional lives of various teenage characters in Visalia, California and oh, boy, does this film certainly show dysfunction. In fact, the most well-adjusted character in the film is a kid who skips school to bang his girlfriend's mother and the film also ends in a threesome. Hell, the film even begins on a provocative tone when Ken Park (named after the film) goes to a skate park, pulls out a camera and a gun, and while smiling and recording himself, shoots himself in the head. It's a film that deals with abuse, religious and familial hypocrisy, adolescent struggles, and so much more complemented by unsimulated sex scenes (The actors were legal age, mind you) including a scene of auto-erotic asphyxiation (Choking yourself to achieve the ultimate orgasm). It's not pretty, it's vulgar, and does everything in its power to shock and offend, but Ken Park is a strangely compelling film nonetheless about the confusing nature of youth. Just know what you're getting into if you ever try to watch this film. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/26/23 Full Review Audience Member Larry Clark has easily created one of the most repulsive films I have ever seen. In attempting to give a voice to the voiceless and abused it ends up one of the most shameless exploitation films I've ever seen. The amount of completely pointless close ups and extended shots of violent/pornographic acts in this film detract from whatever message it is trying to get across (trust me, it is absolutely dying to get one across). The writing and acting occasionally feels believable with the younger characters, however the adults in this film are supremely under written and make their repulsive abuse of authority downright laughable at times. Tate specifically is one of the single most disgusting characters to ever grace this medium, and is given zero depth by the script. Kudos to the cast for being daring (or dumb?) enough to engage in the acts that this film asks them to. But other than some gutty performances and the occasionally chilling image, this is poorly written, pretentious, pornographic nonsense that succeeds in making you feel sick and literally nothing else. If you enjoy being disturbed then feel free to check it out at your own risk, however if you're looking for artistic value, look literally anywhere else. The final scene is far too telling of Larry Clark's career; his Utopia is watching young people fuck. Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Ken Park

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