DVD Review: "Half Nelson" (2007)

This tedious piece of garbage is a story about a crack-addicted, neo-hippie, inner-city history teacher who gets caught freebasing by one of his students. Afterwards, they form an unlikely friendship against the backdrop of their very dissimilar histories.

"Half Nelson" is slow, ultra-liberal (there's plenty of needless America-bashing that contributes the square root of zilch to the plot), and totally pointless. I can't believe star Ryan Gosling is being considered for an Oscar for this role. Why is that Hollywood always loves the tragic figure of the self-destructive do-gooder (see Hanks, Tom in "Philadelphia" as Exhibit A, Cage, Nicholas in "Leaving Las Vegas" as Exhibit B, and Spacey, Kevin in "American Beauty" as Exhibit C) , portraying the hero as a well-meaning victim of circumstance instead of as an ultimately pathetic individual who made a series of bad choices along the road to Loserville? In the case of "Half Nelson", things are made even more irritating by the look of this film, which screams hand-held camera all the way.

Do yourself a favour and just avoid this one.

Overall rating: 2.25/10