July Rising sadly suffers from a problem so many films do these days... a thoroughly unlikable lead character. Talk about confusing an 'independent spirit' with 'out-and-out arrogance and ego'. No matter how many difficult tasks it shows her performing around the farm, no matter how many times she 'proves' to men that she's capable of doing things on her own, the fact remains... she's a horrible individual. The screenplay never acknowledges this and frankly chastises us for thinking this way despite all the evidence on offer, and the movie as a whole never recovers from it.
This is a 16-year old girl trying to run a farm all by herself when her grandad suddenly dies so you'd expect to have some sympathy for her plight, but when she treat literally everyone around her (apart from a few Mexican fruit pickers) like dirt, refuses to consider to impracticality of her ambitions of taking over acres and acres of land by herself at such a young age and regularly physically assaults people and theirproperty for the most minor of disagreements, it's very hard to root for such an obstinate, hateful character. Quite some feat, considering the underlying tragedy of the plot.
But rather than trying to help her change and grow as a result of her turning everyone away and never even considering the reality of her impossible situation, the script bends over backwards to accomodate her selfish and misguided worldview. Suddenly, her constant abuse and outright rudeness shown towards her so-called childhood 'friend' (although we never see any genuinely affectionate interaction between them at all) is all justified because he forcibly kisses her, a regrettable action but something which is totally out of the blue with no build-up whatsoever. This scene feels like it was inserted into the movie as a reason for her non-stop aloofness towards him, instead of a natural development of his previous good character. It's intensely irritating, and you get the impression the director is making up these personalities as he goes along instead of giving us any solid traits to go off of.
It gets worse. Her best female pal tries to get our wannabe farmer to come out of her shell, but is rebuffed again and again and judged for wanting more from her life from wanting to grow up in the country with a husband and kids. Later, it turns out our young farmer was 'right' when her now miserable friend falls pregnant to the other male childhood pal I mentioned before. None of these developments feels organic, all our it seems like the makers are literally warping time and space to make our unpleasant protaganist correct in everything she says or does.
Even the young farmer's aunt, who lives in San Francisco and seems practical and sensible when it comes to the possibility of such a young kid running such a huge plantation on her own, has a 180 degree change of heart after a somewhat heavy-handed montage where I guess they 'bond'. She arranges to sell the produce from the farm to the restaurant she works at because grandad died leaving a lot of debts, so I guess this teenage girl can carry on living at the farm alone, and... I'm sorry, in what plain of weird existence would this plan work?
Thankfully, the ending preserves some level of reality once more, but I guess you're meant to be left feeling sad as our young farmer is driven away. She's had to give up everything due to some 'heartless' bankers who are doing their job for their clients and a few country folk who are sick of living in a rural setting and want to move somewhere a bit more populated with left hard work. How terrible they sold up without specifically clearing it with her first!
I wasn't sorry for her at all. I was thinking about the fact that FINALLY this annoying little snit had been put in her place, and that at last she'd learned... gasp... that the entire solar system didn't revolve around her wants and needs. Maybe she would meet some nice blokes where she was going to as well, seeing as the film was determined not to give us any.
Oh, apart from Grandad. But he died. So, yeah. 4/10.
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