This opinion might soil your viewing experience -- (SPOILER AHEAD).
Briefly, this film lacks the character development of Brent Hartinger's, "The Geography Club" largely due to the inaccuracies of its narrative. The screenplay greatly adjusted the chronology of events in the novel and in doing so the consequences of character interaction became watered down. Victim to cinematic alteration, the journey of Russell and Kevin's love affair becomes marginalized if not completely shallow. One of the pillars of the novel are the sacrifices that each character make to become closer to each other -- the ultimate being their involvement within the secret club -- creating the tension necessary to convey the pain of a crushing separation. In the film Kevin seems weak with selfish identity issues and Russell is warped into a less confident, more conflicted version of himself. Russell was never confused about his sexuality in the novel and yet in the film he was very hesitant to define his attractions as "gay" (a reflection of current views on male sexuality no doubt) . Kevin, in the novel was never outright selfish so much as he was afraid/preservationist of his popularity becoming compromised while cinematically he was a self-hating jock (specifically, he did want to be gay and preferred football) with parents who clearly knew he was closeted.
There is so much more:
Just so much.. Read the book. You Can read the e-book for free.. just google it!!!
Briefly, this film lacks the character development of Brent Hartinger's, "The Geography Club" largely due to the inaccuracies of its narrative. The screenplay greatly adjusted the chronology of events in the novel and in doing so the consequences of character interaction became watered down. Victim to cinematic alteration, the journey of Russell and Kevin's love affair becomes marginalized if not completely shallow. One of the pillars of the novel are the sacrifices that each character make to become closer to each other -- the ultimate being their involvement within the secret club -- creating the tension necessary to convey the pain of a crushing separation. In the film Kevin seems weak with selfish identity issues and Russell is warped into a less confident, more conflicted version of himself. Russell was never confused about his sexuality in the novel and yet in the film he was very hesitant to define his attractions as "gay" (a reflection of current views on male sexuality no doubt) . Kevin, in the novel was never outright selfish so much as he was afraid/preservationist of his popularity becoming compromised while cinematically he was a self-hating jock (specifically, he did want to be gay and preferred football) with parents who clearly knew he was closeted.
There is so much more:
- Ike was a liberal political activist in the novel and far from his cinematic portrayal - Teresa was the female equivalent of Kevin and far from accountable to Min - Gunnar was Norwegian, slightly vindictive, extremely smart and socially awkward.. not the "clown" - Min and Russell were far more close which made the Sting of Russell's treatment of Brian much worse - Where was Belinda? Oh wait, the heterosexual, overweight daughter of an alcoholic was morphed into Ike or Teresa.. - There is no science trip.
Just so much.. Read the book. You Can read the e-book for free.. just google it!!!