This bleak little drama started as a play, and I'd bet that even onstage it felt contrived.
The Young Unknowns (2003)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:29
Fresh:4
Rotten:25
Average Rating:4.1/10
Consensus: A movie about uninteresting people doing uninteresting things.
Synopsis: At his father's expensive home in the Los Angeles hills, aspiring filmmaker Charlie (Devon Gummersall) and his browbeaten girlfriend, Paloma (Arly Jover) bicker and drink until Charlie's best... At his father's expensive home in the Los Angeles hills, aspiring filmmaker Charlie (Devon Gummersall) and his browbeaten girlfriend, Paloma (Arly Jover) bicker and drink until Charlie's best friend Joe (Eion Bailey) arrives, who is another privileged, indulgent Hollywood type. Joe brings both drugs and Cassandra (Leslie Bibb), an aspiring model he has recently met. Over the course of the day, Charlie and Joe get wasted, abuse Cassandra, and alienate Paloma. But when Charlie gets news of a family tragedy, he deals with it by indulging even further, and a night on the town takes the events of the day for an even more tragic turn. Loosely based on a 1969 play by Wolfgang Bauer, THE YOUNG UNKNOWNS taps into the familiar territory of jaded, emotionally hollow twentysomethings, deriving its strength from its astute performances and sharp dialogue. Writer-director Catherine Jelski's film was finished in 2000, but not properly released until 2003--creating a buzz on the festival circuit in the interim, largely due to Gummersall's performance. Charlie is a repugnant character--spoiled, hateful, and arrogant--but in Gummersall's (best known as mild-mannered Brian Krackow or TV's MY SO_CALLED LIFE) hands, he also becomes sympathetic and vulnerable. [More]
Starring: Devon Gummersall, Eion Bailey, Leslie Bibb, Arly Jover
Starring: Devon Gummersall, Eion Bailey, Leslie Bibb, Arly Jover, S.A. Templeman
Director: Catherine Jelski
Director: Catherine Jelski
Screenwriter: Catherine Jelski
Producer: Kimberly Shane O'Hara, Eric M. Klein, Catherine Jelski
Studio: Indican Pictures
Reviews for The Young Unknowns
The film wants to be a revealing character study of aimless Hollywood wannabes, but the story is just not compelling enough to make the viewer care.
Feels like a pity-party for a few spoiled jerks who, all things considered, don't really merit 90 minutes of my undivided attention.
Within this haze of drug abuse, cockiness and hollowness, we're supposed to feel for our young, spoiled protagonist. Sadly, what we mostly feel is the pain of our eyes constantly rolling in our heads.
First-time director Catherine Jelski dredges up every cliche about druggy, obnoxious dreamers on the fringes of Hollywood and assumes that said cliches have the power to shock and surprise.
You're not going to feel enlightened by The Young Unknowns and, frankly, you'll probably benefit by keeping them unknown from your film-going pocketbook.
Jelski's casting is daring, in its way, and I wish more American filmmakers would follow her example.
The film wants to be a revealing character study of aimless Hollywood wannabes, but the story is just not compelling enough to make the viewer care.
The writing and the lead performance of Devon Gummersall in Catherine Jelski's The Young Unknowns makes this spoiled rich kid movie almost tolerable.
A film of probative quietude with fiercely invested in performances; in small ways perceptive and intelligent but overall too lackadaisical in its intellectual application to leave upon viewers more than a faint, passing memory.
They're not just Young Unknowns, they're also unintelligent, uninspired and unfailingly irritating, too.
It is a harrowing experience, anchored by the solid portrayal by young Devon Gummersall.
Yet another sordid tale of single white Hollywood kids who get drugged, drunk and disorderly by their swimming pools.
A curious exercise in the vein of David Rabe's Hurlyburly that needed greater dramatic heft than is exhibited by the industry lightweights it depicts.
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