Favorite Son (2008)

When "David" (Pablo Schreiber) returns to his hometown after a decent minor-league baseball career, his welcome is less that warm. Keen to put down some roots, he meets and falls for "Joan" (Kellie Overbey) who has a teenage son "Ross" (Connor Paolo) - a lad who probably needs a father figure. "David" struggles to get any traction from the woman and when he starts to spend more time with the somewhat rebellious youth, people - including "Joan" - start to jump to some conclusions, especially when the two men go swimming in an out of the way lake. It's at this stage that the plot becomes a little more interesting; the melodrama ebbs a little and we are left with quite a menacing undercurrent of predatory behaviour that could leave the young man particularly vulnerable from an authority figure trusted by all. Sadly, though the film ends well enough, the vast majority of this is just a rather mundane rite-of-passage type thing with no stand out performances (except, perhaps for the young Paolo) and a dialogue that is very pedestrian. It does look good, but any half decent cinematographer ought to have been able to deliver that, given the beauty of their rural surroundings. It tries to deal with subjects well worth exposure, but this is all just too superficial to make any lasting contribution.