Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 86% (Critics) / 82% (Audience)
Directed By: Benh Zeitlin
Written By: Lucy Alibar and Benh Zeitlin
Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry and Levy Easterly
Studio: Fox Searchlight

Synopsis: Faced with her father’s fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy leaves her Delta-community home in search of her mother.
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The Good:
This movie has two things going for it: the visual style of director Benh Zeitlin and the charismatic performance of newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis. Zeitlin has a great storytelling eye and there were very few moments in this film that did not seriously pop off the screen. He needs to ease up on the shaky cam but otherwise his visual style is very unique and promising. Wallis is a a very unrefined performer who has no prior acting experience and a lot of her work seemed to be just recitation of lines but she is a very charismatic presence and very commanding despite her diminutive size and young age. Once she smooths over the rougher edges of her acting she is going to be a very good actress.

The Bad:
When I was a kid if I was anywhere that had a self-serve fountain soda machine I would create this bizarre tasting concoction that was made up of every soda I’d mix the cola with the root beer with the orange soda and so on to make an odd syrupy beverage that did not taste all that great. That was what this movie felt like…a bunch of disparate ideas poured into one movie but never really coming together to make something good.

The Ugly:
The depiction of the bayou folk living beyond the levees was a bit much. It was like these people were all gathered from the casting call for a Deliverance remake or something.
And what was up with the the dime-a-dance establishment out in the middle of the river?

Final Verdict: Unique visual stylings by its young director and a commanding performance by its even younger star help to keep BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD afloat amidst the schizophrenic nature of the film. There are strong germs of ideas throughout but none of them ever fully come together to create the movie that I was hoping to see. C+