BY Adam Nayman June 01, 2006 15:06
Look closer, urged the ads for American Beauty, and Michael Cuesta seems to have taken this mandate literally: his follow-up to his acclaimed 2001 debut L.I.E. is shot primarily in extreme close-up. Like American Beauty, Twelve and Holding attempts to expose the rot that lurks beneath the carefully manicured lawns of small-town America, but where Sam Mendes' Oscar winner surveyed middle-aged disappointment, Cuesta's film labours to convince us that it's the kids who aren't alright.
Of course they're not: they're trapped in a catastrophe-a-minute screenplay that reads like an inventory of hot-button issues. Teenage obesity, sibling rivalry, guns in the home and pedophilia: these and other crises are dispersed evenly among our three preadolescent protagonists. Hefty, sad-eyed Leonard (Jesse Camacho) goes to war with his roly-poly family over their eating habits; sly, precocious Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum) woos a grown-up construction worker to the strains of Blue Oyster Cult; and glum, mildly disfigured Jacob (Conor Donovan) mulls avenging the accidental death of his twin brother at the hands of a neighborhood bully.
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