Sorry, this movie sucks

People are voting emotionally.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Fans of "Times Square" (1980) and of its Director Allen Moyle might want to check out "Jack & Diane" for a little compare and contrast. The comparison should help them appreciate the many missteps Moyle could have made and credit his instinctive feel for making small films that connect with their target audiences."Jack & Diane" is not badly shot and the audio is good, so you can't explain the lameness away by calling it a student film. It is saved from being a complete embarrassment by it being so modest an effort with so little pretension. Thankfully there is no director's commentary although what could the writer/director of something this sterile possibly have to say? Unfortunately, being embarrassed for the cast and crew would at least constitute some degree of viewer involvement with the film and the story; however perverse.In the absence of embarrassment there is simply nothing here to generate a response from a viewer. It is one of those extremely rare cases where the three-way dynamic between the artist, the work, and the observer simply does not occur; no connection is fused, nothing is engaged in the viewer. Or to put it simply, a example of how decent production and post-production cannot breathe life into something where the pre-production was so becalmed as to be sans pulse.Juno Temple is a transcendent actress with the most interesting a face out there today. To the film's credit there are considerable extreme close-ups of her and sincere attempts by her at nonverbal character development; but nonverbal connections to the viewer only happen when the story has some basic coherence.Once Temple was cast and the comedic potential of her stock airhead character was recognized (along with the almost scary talent disparity between her and her co-star), the answer for the screenplay's absence of life should have been obvious. Think Goldie Hawn playing off Charles Grodin. A little exaggeration in that direction (after all they were already going expressionistic with the effects) and they might have had something worthy of release, or at least something to justify its basic existence. Instead one is left to lament their failure to simply donate the budget to a local children's research hospital.

Action movies with tons of heads getting blown off and blood bursts don't always have 'points'. Most are just ways of showing action and people say, 'Well, what do you expect?' For some reason there is a double standard in cinema now where a movie, if it isn't a genre, has to have some mind blowing '1984' point. Well, the truth is, people don't care about points. I know people that have written great books with compelling themes and can't get them published. It's all about what people think, what they think they want, and how they sum it all up in the end.Most people will watch 'Jack and Diane' and say, 'That was a big waste of time. There was no point. The acting was weak. Why did I watch that?'Sometimes we take for granted what a movie, or story for that matter is. 'Jack and Diane' is a glimpse. It's a look at a situation that might have happened or could happen. The characters are not developed, because you are supposed to imagine them in your mind or even perhaps see your self in them.The truth is, there was a lot said in this movie: about people, about how we can't see into other people's lives, feel what they feel; how we are closed off and encapsulated and outwardly poisonous to anyone we don't know. There was an over all theme of love and awakening sexual desire. People don't want that stuff, so most will look at this movie and say the usual 'what's the point' People like love stories where a guy gets a girl, where a girl gets a guy and they move in together and have two kids and a dog. People like the thriller where some guy succeeds through unreasonable measure an impossible situation while somehow falling in love and solving his life problems.We like movies where people get shot and cut up; based on true life bs. But, when a movie about two kids loving each other for a brief time, feeling that bud of love in their stomachs and loins, comes out...we judge it to shreds. Juno Temple and Riley Keough did a great job. They acted. There wasn't any big chase scene or gun fight or montage. They didn't give speeches. The dialogue really doesn't matter either. It was just two characters growing emotion. Why can't that be enough for an hour and a half?

Jack & Diane (2012) ** (out of 4) This film has been thrown out as a lesbian teen drama, a romantic drama and even a horror drama and while it does try to mix all of those things I think it fails for the most part. The story centers on British teen Diane (Juno Temple) who falls in love with female friend Jack (Riley Keough) and we see their troubled relationship turn into something rather bizarre. I'm really not sure what JACK & DIANE was trying to do unless it just wanted to be one of those indie movies that managed to be all over the place and seem rather other worldly while wanting the viewer to make up their mind on what it's about. I don't think the film was as bad as some of the reviews out there but there's still no question that there are quite a few flaws here. The biggest is that the film just never really makes us care about the characters and this here is the fault of the screenplay. I'm really not sure what writer-director Bradley Rust Gray was wanting to say or do with these characters but they never really come to life. For the majority of the overlong running time I was just sitting there wondering what anything I was watching was supposed to mean. The romantic elements never really work, the drama between the two never works and when the horror elements do show up they just seem out of place. The werewolf creation looks pretty bad but I think this was done on purpose. The horror elements just really seem out of place as if they were added just to expand the market. I did think the director at least made a good looking film and it was certainly professionally done. The biggest draw for me was the two leads and I thought both of them did a very good job. I thought Keough, Elvis' granddaughter, does a very good job in her part and I thought she handled the character well and managed to make you believe her in the role. Temple was absolutely charming in her part and her beauty certainly helped carry the film but she also managed to give an actual performance. With that said, it's hard to know who to recommend this thing to because the film's really all over the map and doesn't really succeed at anything it tries.

To be clear, Jack and Diane has nothing whatsoever to do with John Cougar Mellencamp's 1982 song of the same name. That song was a brilliant piece of Americana about two kids, a boy and a girl, growing up in Middle America. This movie is a disorganized piece of indie "realism" about two girls in New York who approach falling in love with one another. The problem is that the movie doesn't have enough confidence in its characters to develop them in a way that makes us care.The major focus of the film is Diane (Juno Temple), a wide eyed Brit with a mop of blonde hair who chooses baby doll dresses to be her ever-present wardrobe. She's a cute girl who misbehaves, drinks to the point of vomiting and has frequent nosebleeds. The other girl is Jack (Riley Keough, the granddaughter of Elvis) a skate-boarding butch lesbian, a loner who finds something to like about this dysfunctional Diane.The girls meet in a store one day and have a few shy, awkward exchanges before Diane has another nosebleed. The nosebleeds are never explained nor followed up and neither is a scene in which Jack is hit by a car immediately following their initial meeting. There are a lot of things in this movie that happen that are never really explained. The frustration of this movie is that the love affair happens in episodes, not in continuity.There is something in these two girl that, in a better movie, might have made for a pure down-to-earth love story. The problem is that the screenplay won't have it. It keeps intercutting their budding relationship with a lot of episodic nonsense, like a silly scene in which Diane escapes into the bathroom to shave her pubic area, or the reoccurring microscopic images of something monstrous growing inside of Diane that are perhaps supposed to be manifestations of her twisted feelings about Jack. We see internal organs with hair slithering tightly around them, but we are left to assume what that might be. We are led to believe that it is the manifestation of this new lifestyle but you're never really sure. The scenes are disgusting and fall on the story like a ton of bricks.Those scenes seem to indicate that the filmmakers didn't know how to create characters with genuine emotions. The screen presence of the two girls but what they have to talk about is dull and uninteresting when it isn't being intruded upon by another dramatic element. The movie moves away from their relationship as an effort to keep from having to really deal with them. This is a very confused movie that leaves you scratching you're head when it's over.