As Netflix and my love for obscure (and sometimes bad) movies seem to collectively get the better of me, I ended up watching Keith. It stars Jesse McCartney, which initially made me quite hesitant to add the movie to my Instant Queue, but the synopsis sucked me in with its constant talk of some mystery that McCartney's character held. He's the new kid in school, "unwillingly" befriends popular girl Natalie when they are lab partners in an AP Chemistry class, and they fall in love... but there's some mystery, some secret in McCartney's life that is preventing them from truly being together... or something-- that's based off of the Netflix description. Anyways, what honestly made me choose to actually watch the movie was McCartney's appearance on the Netflix-advertised-poster (seen above)- he looks kind of butch-lesbian-like, so it got me thinking that perhaps his secret is that he's really a girl (think Boys Don't Cry), which made the movie appear that much more complexly interesting, plus I had to see if that's what the mystery was (though i was 98% certain it was not, ya never know!). Within the first few minutes of the movie, it became very apparent that that was not the secret, and instead he was supposed to be more of a bad boy (which was my second guess based off the poster, but come on, you can't deny that based on that photo if his character was a girl-- which admittedly would be weird to see him actually play-- it wouldn't be that far out. he just has very soft features, i suppose)
I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by McCartney's acting, though I've never really given him a fair shot after his Dream Street days (but who in their right mind would? talk about bad boy band!) and had beyond zero expectations; in fact, I had negative expectations. However, this is not your average coming-of-age high school movie; it has more depth, and is on the darker side. I liked it much more than I had thought I would, though some parts of it moved a little slowly.
All in all I enjoyed it, and would recommend it if you don't have anything else to watch, or if you really like Jess McCartney, because I know some of you do.
