Director: Marti Noxon
Writer: Marti Noxon (Screenplay)
Starring: Lily Collins, Keanu Reeves, Alex Sharp, Ciara Bravo, Liana Liberato, Carrie Preston, Leslie Bibb, Lili Taylor
Plot: A young woman is dealing with anorexia. She meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Hard But Important Watch
Story: To the Bone starts as we meet young woman Ellen (Collins) who has been battle anorexia nervosa, she is given a chance to move in with her father and stepmother Susan (Preston) who arranges for her to see a specialist Dr Beckham (Reeves) whose methods have offered people a new chance to recover.
Ellen goes to stay in an outpatient’s home, where she meets fellow suffers including Luke (Sharp), Kendra (McDowell), Anna (Prescott), Pearl (Eshet), Megan (Bibb), and Tracey (Bravo) as Dr Beckham uses the idea of friendship, desire to live and acceptance of people around them.
Thoughts on To the Bone
Characters – Ellen is the young lady suffering with anorexia nervosa, while her family does support her they just don’t understand her disease, Ellen goes to a new treatment hospital where she meets more people suffering and it is here she must learn the biggest lesson if she wants to cure herself. This is a very important character that shows how easily a person can hide their problems from family and friends. Dr Beckham shows us a doctor can give up plenty of his own time to treat the people most people don’t know how to deal with. Luke is one of the patients at the home that always seem positive and has made hug improvements but deep down he knows the truth about his future and his confidence hides this. We also have the parental characters that don’t understand how to act and other sufferers that are at different stages of the disease.
Performance – Lily Collins is great in this leading role, she shows us the suffering her character must be going through in every scene. Keanu Reeves does give us a good performance here showing he can be a doctor figure that can help people and doesn’t need true emotional range. Alex Sharp carries most of the energy in this film and shows that he could be a name to watch out for future.
Story – The story focuses on dealing with eating disorders, it shows how difficult it can be to get people to understand the troubles the characters are going through and how they need to find a way to improve themselves. This is an important watch because it shows how easily this disease can go unnoticed until it is too late and is one people need to go and watch.
Settings – The settings show that home doesn’t understand, but the hospital home does its best to help the characters get better, this shows us just what is needed to help the people suffering.
Scene of the Movie – The Trip.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The father is a complete asshole and we never see him.
Final Thoughts – This is an important film that does tackle an important subject matter that people should be seeing but it isn’t just a casual evening movie because of this subject matter.
Overall: Important watch for all.
Rating
