Review: The Movie Version of "Dream Boy" is Strictly for Fans of the Book

Fans of Jim Grimsley's 1995 gay coming-of-age novel Dream Boy may very well enjoy the 2008 movie version, which is finally out on DVD. After all, this is an amazingly faithful adaptation of the book.

I don't think too many others will find much here to appreciate.

The movie begins with a surprising lack of drama. In the 1970s, two boys in the rural south meet and fall in love: a shy, bookish type and his more outgoing "farmboy" neighbor. The pace is slow, but there are some nice moments (often taken directly from the book), as when the two boys' eyes meet in the mirror of the school bus. It's all very earnest, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but is a little jarring after the irony-infused 00s.

When the conflict finally kicks in about halfway through, there's certainly a lot of it: the boys are threatened by both family secrets and the intolerance of the local community, including (naturally) the farmboy's jocky friends.

But we've seen variations the story of the sensitive nerd in love with the gay jock (and his jocky friends) so many times now that what felt fresh in 1995, when Grimsley published his novel, doesn't feel that way now.

The subplot about sexual abuse is more interesting, but even that has a "been there, done that" feel to it.

But mostly, what kills the movie is a very passive main character and an almost ridiculously depressing plot-point — not to mention an intrusive, awkward musical score.

Then there's the book's famous "ambiguous" ending. What's touching on the page is simply confusing here, because, unlike most such endings, it's not that you see one thing that can be interpreted in two different ways. No, you literally see two contradictory things with your eyes. This part especially feels like a clunky student film.

I happened to like Dream Boy, the novel, very much, but this movie is a perfect example of how the medium of the novel and the medium of film are so very different. It's not enough to simply film the events of a book and be done with it. A novel must be completely reimagined for film. A book like this, moody and impressionistic, requires special handling that director Jim Bolton (The Graffiti Artist) just didn't do.

The movie includes two interesting cameos in the roles of the boys' two mothers: 80s musician Rickie Lee Jones and Diana Scarwid, who played Christina Crawford in Mommie Dearest.