'NOVEMBER CRIMINALS'.........IS THERE A MOVIE IN HERE?

November Criminals (2017)   This one's a total puzzle to us.....

           The novel it's based on sweat bullets to come across as a "Catcher In The Rye" wanna-be.....loaded with countless pages of snarky internal monologues from its quirky high school protagonist.....

          The filmmakers chose to completely drain the book of everything except the bare skeleton of its storyline, which has Snarky Kid and his adorable girlfriend conduct a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew investigation into the seemingly random shooting death of their best friend......

           So when you see the credit, "inspired by the novel by Sam Munson"......be afraid, be very afraid......

           In stripping the novel of all its stylistic finesse and character development, the filmmakers couldn't even decide on which simplistic tale to tell.  A thriller?  A teen angst drama?  A coming-of-age romance?

           It's ends up as none of those things.......85 minutes of watching good actors going through their paces with no clear direction as to what kind of story they're telling or where they're going with it.

           We have no earthly clue as to what the filmmakers attempted here.........sucking all the air out of their source material and then expecting a coherent piece of art to come out of it.

           No sense even discussing this any further. The film's a black hole, an empty vessel....a (feel free to fill in your own metaphor here.............)

           We'll grudgingly give up 1/2 of a star (1/2) purely for the always welcome presence of Chloe Grace Moretz.......always watchable even when stuck with a useless, thankless role in this nothing of a movie.