Meet the Virgin Surgeon *Spoiler warning* (Kids (DVD))

Member Name: LittleEwok

Product:	Kids (DVD)
Date:	26/03/05 (1225 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Jenny

Disadvantages: Everything else about this film

Kids is a mockumentary filmed in 1995 by Larry Smith. Its about a bunch of kids hanging around, taking drugs, getting laid and passing the HIV virus between each other.

Kids tells the tale of Telly, an irritating and immature little muppet whose only love in life is taking the virginity of young girls, usually under 16. A self-styled "Virgin surgeon", we see him spin the usual lines young lads spin to get girls into the bed with them, with the exception that these young ladies average age 13. Oh, and Telly is HIV positive, although we assume he doesn’t know this. We also see Jenny, a girl who finds out she is HIV positive, and only having slept with one guy, Telly, knows instantly who it is. Basically the tale is about Telly getting wasted and hitting on young women (sorry, girls), and Jenny trying to find him and tell him he has HIV.

The basic point of this film is to shock parents, and in that it succeeds. Apart from that it’s a lame piece of nonsense. To be honest though, there is only so much shock factor in the film. After the opening sequence where the repulsive Telly deflowers another innocent virgin, who cant be much more than thirteen, which is rather graphic and basically brings to mind a phrase from Carrie in Sex and the City- “masturbating with a woman instead of your hand”, you cant really get much more shocked, not even when you watch an unconscious girl being raped, a bunch of kids who must be about eight or nine smoking joints, or a young man being beaten near to death (or possibly to death) by a mob of brats.

Obviously there are moral messages in their ,but the way they’re portrayed isn’t particularly helpful…its pretty hard to feel sorry for such a bunch of gullible little idiots. The films also portrays the issues of HIV, underage sex, drinking and drugs in a way that is a strange mix of blasé and sensationalist, with the result that you feel as if the movie is saying “Look how terrible this is but its really just another day in the life of a New York kid”. The moral messages just don’t work purely because the characters aren’t human, they’re just paper caricatures of nightmare kids. They don’t seem like real people, so its impossible to take anything away from this film, even the moral message it carries.

The plot is beyond basic and its pretty much impossible to describe even the basic synopsis without giving everything away, its so basic. Bunch of kids get wasted, have sex, fight, pop pills in a club…blah blah blah. Basically its 24 hours following a bunch of kids around New York.

The characters are truly awful and flat. They serve no purpose other than to provide a base for a finger-wagging “don’t do this, don’t do that” session. They are lifeless, sub-human and unlikeable, and its pretty hard to feel sorry for anyone involved in this movie.

One of the only funny things about this film is the completely not understandable sex appeal of main character Telly…he’s vile and irritating and you just want to hit him all the time. Not only this, he’s clearly thick as a plank, with absolutely no redeemable features to be spoken of. Its just not possible to understand how this little rat has slept with so many pretty little underagers.

You’re supposed to feel sorry for the girls he’s infecting with the HIV virus but its hard not to think about how stupid they would be having sex with an imbecile like this…sorry that wasn’t very PC and was rather harsh, but watch the film and you will know what I‘m talking about. In real life no-one would sleep with this nasty little boy and we all know it.

Casper, Telly’s best friend, isn’t much better. At first he seems slightly more likeable than Telly, but really he’s just an extra vehicle to show more naughty exploits of under age teens. He seems little more likeable or intelligent than Telly, and after a disgusting scene at the end of the movie you hate him just as much as you hate Telly.

The only decent character in this film is the lovely Jenny, the girl who has just found out Telly has given her HIV. Its possible to feel very bad for her as she wanders the city on her own trying to find Telly, while his friends make jibes at her and people continually exploit her. You can see her genuine grief and her impulsive behaviour as a result of it. She has a sweet and naïve vulnerability about her which makes her seem much more likeable than the nasty little brats around her.

In the end this is just another movie about the dehumanising process of growing up. All those cheap shocks just don’t add up to a good movie, and all it is is a bunch of disapproving middle class idiots looking down their noses at a bunch of teens who have been left by their parents to do as they please. It doesn’t bring any new ideas, or perhaps better solutions, to the long exploited genre of shock-factor teen movies, it is nothing more than an hour-and-a-half advertisement to terrify parents. Utter trash. The only reason it should have been “Banned in the UK” is because its an insult to decent film-makers everywhere.

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