Power to the teenager

FILM producers believe that today’s movie audience is mostly made up of people younger than 30, hence the proliferation of films for juvenile, adolescent, tween, teen and young-adult viewers.

Going by that yardstick, the current film, “Chronicle,” should do very well indeed with moviegoers, because it plays directly to the “power fantasies” of otherwise insecure and powerless teenagers.

Its young protagonist is an especially confused and conflicted bundle of ties and neuroses: His mother is desperately ill, his dad is an emotionally distant and often even absent father, and everybody thinks he’s a social zero.

—Well, they got that exactly right—but, for good and bad, something really strange happens to him and his two friends: They get zapped by “something” that gives them special powers that make them practically superhuman!

They still look like the geeks they used to be, but now they can levitate, push and lift the heaviest objects around, and perform “magic tricks” that are fact, not freaky sci-fi.

Trouble is, they can’t keep their fantastic secret to themselves—and they can’t control their powers and focus on using them for other people’s welfare. Instead, the story’s main protagonist, Andrew (Dane DeHaan), uses them to get back at the many people who’ve done him wrong—with tragic consequences.

Consequences

This is where the initially thrilling and imaginative production starts to unravel and turn too weird and spaced-out for its own good. Part of the exaggerated unraveling is merited, because it warns teen viewers about the consequences of their own unbridled anger and hate.

But, it gets to be so over the top that the “moral lesson” is forgotten, and the focus on the thrill and rapture of vengeance for its own sake sends out dangerous signals to young moviegoers.

On point of filmmaking, the music’s first half entertains and excites, because it presents the youths’ special powers in a strikingly believable way. The performances are similarly believable and felt a rare quality to find in teen flicks these days.

But, when Andrew finally snaps, the movie over-reaches and visually goes as berserk as it’s by now demented “hero,” to achieve its “apocalyptic” finale.

Now, we know that some teenagers do get carried away, but the makers of this movie aren’t callow and immature youths, so they should know better than to go-for-broke “gonzo” on this incredible scale and magnitude.

In freaking out so spectacularly—and mindlessly—they “empower” their movie’s young viewers with a deadly fantasy and downright lie, instead of helping them face up to and surmount their real problems. —Wake up, everybody, it really is only a movie!