Director: Silas Howard
Writer: Daniel Pearle (Screenplay)
Starring: Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, Octavia Spencer, Priyanka Chopra, Ann Dowd, Amy Landecker
Plot: Loving parents of a four-year-old must come to terms with their child being transgender.
Runtime: 1 Hour 32 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: A Kid Like Jake starts as parents Alex (Danes) and Greg (Parsons) are looking for a school for their son Jake (Davis) in the competitive school district, when they start to notice that Jake is different to the rest of the students, he enjoys princesses, over male figures, which sees Alex and Greg starting to investigate what might have caused this, or what the bigger issue might be.
When Greg starts to come to the realization that Jake is a transgender, he needs to get this through to Alex, while Judy (Spencer) is struggling to find a safe school for a transgender student to attend.
Thoughts on A Kid Like Jake
Characters – Alex is the mother that gave up her time as a lawyer to raise the couple’s son, she has suffered miscarriages and when Jake starts wanting to wear dresses, she doesn’t know how to deal with this happening to her son, not understanding how to deal with the fact her son is different. Greg is the therapist father that will start to take a step back to see what is happening and suggests Jake see a specialist to help understand the changes he is going through. He is more open to what Jake wants and must help Alex understand it isn’t a bad thing. Jake is the son in question, while he isn’t on screen much, he is the one that is trying understand why he is different to the other students. Judy helps the children find the schools, she is aware things will be difficult for Jake and is trying her hardest to help prepare Alex and Greg for the future.
Performances – Claire Danes and Jim Parsons are both brilliant here, showing us just how difficult it could be to understand the situation they are in, showing how it can become even more difficult without having anyone to prepare them. Octavia Spencer gives us one of her trademark quality supporting roles, with the whole cast shining through here.
Story – The story here follows parents that start to learn that their son is a transgender and must start to learn about it, the struggles they will need to go through as less people will be accepting their son going forward. This movie does get to show us the difficulties parents would have when it comes to learning about their child being different, while they are not different in any sort of bad way, it is hard to adjust to what they were expecting. It shows that not everyone is going to be accepting, which is going to cause problems going forward for Jake too. We focus on being prepared for what the future is going to hold.
Settings – The film is set in New York, which highlights the competitiveness of trying to get kids into the schools within their district with the added stress thrown at the parents in this situation.
Scene of the Movie – The argument, showing both Danes and Parsons full skills.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – We don’t really get to see Jake point of view from anything going on.
Final Thoughts – This is an important drama that will highlight the changes people will be going through in a more modern world that isn’t going to be found in an educational system.
Signature Entertainment presents A Kid Like Jake on Amazon Prime September 4th
