a review of 少年侦探

Kind of cowardly of me to not review and rate this when I watched it. I think the ending is really good. I love mysteries and its not because I want a fair play mystery where I can solve it myself - what I appreciate is a movie that lays out all its pieces and then gives you the satisfaction of it all coming together with a final stroke. This movie drip-feeds the pieces that make the ending actually really expected and it does so masterfully. I’m just not sure if I actually like it. This movie draws a parallel between Abe and Principal Erwin by demonstrating them both to be pathetic nothing burgers of men. It attempts to contrast them by having the Principal be a pedophile about it. We are meant to believe this future is on the table for Abe, as implied by the joke where the news lies about him masturbating in the girls closet. And I just - don’t think that’s how that really plays. The movie wants us to think Abe doesn’t go down that path because he is a good person who went through a character arc and the Principal is a bad person who didn’t. While this makes for utterly amazing story telling, I think it misses that the principal is like that in part because he has a position of power to exploit, one Abe distinctly does not have. As a result I’m not actually sure I buy the comparison - because any story that deals with the sexual exploitation of children needs to approach the issue through the lens of power.