Wednesday, June 1, 2011

"Love and Debate" - Movie Review

Dear Blogosphere -
Because I am not that interesting, you may not have noticed that I went an entire month without blogging. That was entirely intentional, as I had just forced you to listen to a month's worth of my random thoughts and figured you deserved a break.

But now it is June and honestly my fingers have been itching to get back to rambling here. So, I thought I'd treat you to a movie review. Love and Debate is a 2006 independent film that addresses exactly what it's titled to address - Love and Debate.

Jordan, the protagonist, is a skilled high school debater in her senior year. Given the opportunity to go to Harvard for debate, she must learn how to share her life between her parents desires, her own passions, and her skills.

The reasons I would recommend this film:
- great depiction of competitive debate.
- also great Latin music/dancing
- also Sean Austin
- believable (albeit stereotypical) characters

The reasons I did not like this film:
- washed-out colors of Miami are not my favorite
- predictable plot, and it's a narrative movie (when the character starts and ends by narrating)
- the middle part, when there's no debate, is kind of boring

Basically, I watched it for the debate. They really hit it spot on, the evidence, the prep, the fast reading, the judges and the tiny classrooms where it's only you, the other team, the judge, and maybe your coach. I really enjoyed the flood of memories that the film provided. Sometimes I forget the part of me that is designed for competitive debate. The part of me that loves the thrill of arguing and fallacies and thinking on my feet, the part of me that wanted to be caught up on foreign policy in order to find good evidence cards. (I know, all of you who know me are thinking, 'that argumentative girl didn't go that far away').

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