skteboard11 The United States of Leland is a lovable film about a semi-detached kid named Leland P. Fitzgerald. Leland ,played by a very young Ryan Gosling, has an "awkward" look on life to say the least. He never sees his father and his girlfriend is a heroin addict.This movies time-line is all messed up, in all honesty. Though I just told you the beginning of the story, you do not figure any of that out until after half of the movie is over. The true plot comes when Leland, a seemingly gentle person, commits the murder of a special needs kid. The kid was also his girlfriends brother. Well Ex- girlfriend. At this point in the movie, she had already broken little Leland's heart, which maybe one of the only scenes he shows emotion.While he is in juvenile hall, the movie jumps back and forth and seems to be trying to explain why he done what he had done. Leland meets a man who takes an interest in him. He wants to write a book about Leland. He sneaks Leland a pencil and a notebook which Leland titles The United States Of Leland. He constantly writes in this book, and when the movie is concluding, the author wanna-be decides to read the notebook. Leland wrote about how sad the world is, and how he seen the sadness the most in the kid he murdered. Of course, none of this is revealed until Leland is murdered in Juvenile hall by a close family friend to the victim.Do You agree? disagree? Whatever the case, make sure you watch this movie knowing it uses the word 'retard' a lot. Just a warning.Gavin Johns, Wanna-Be critic, [email protected]

p-stepien A bloody and seemingly pointless murder of an autistic boy, brings about a cantankerous amount of toilet-paper philosophy, when the culprit Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling), son of famed author Albert T. Fitzgerald (Kevin Spacey), discloses the reality of his actions to wannabee writer and correctional facility teacher Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle). In the background multiple people cajole and sulk about with their best impressions of Droopy the Dog. These include Becky Pollard (Jena Malone), Leland's ex-girl and former drug addict and Julie Pollard (Michele Williams), prepping for college and a change of scenery, both sisters to the murdered boy. Add on Julie over-protective boyfriend Allen Harris (Chris Klein), Leland's eternally sad mother Marybeth (Lena Olin) and a host of other drab characters to form the backbone of a cumbersome tale of woe, doom and gloom of juvenile sadness.The story labours from the on-set, setting up the overbearing negative mood to the proceedings, which never lighten, instead engulfing the dreariness with adequate music and countless lingering shots of people weeping, praying, fretting, getting high or just plainly pulling a down face. Within this framing comes Pearl Madison, an aspiring writer, who wishes to benefit from the story withheld in Leland's emotions and thoughts. In a venture to disclose the reason, the why, he must come to terms with his own frailties (as he is only a human being) in order to accept the pristine views of his object of interest. Characters throw about tidbits of wisdom frequently, somewhat successfully given the general positive feedback from viewers, but it all seems so flagrantly skin-deep, hitting at you with a lack of restraint and more like microwave philosophy for the modern age, where things must be served fast and straight up.Somewhere near the end the story manages to tie up nicely in a well packaged conclusion, nicely connecting all the loose threads with an effective finale. Shame however that the entire build-up is just so smug and trite.

uncertain OK, so there's this kid who had a not-so-great life and, like, did this bad thing. He goes to a kiddie-jail and makes friends with his teacher. His teacher does some good things, but he also does some bad thing, too. But not, like, as bad as the things the kid did, but, like, still bad things. And then some, like, stuff happens, and like, you never really find out why. It's there just to be there. Like, the end. Garbage. Total garbage. Anybody who says this is a movie worth watching forgot how to see junk when it's staring them in the face.

Merwyn Grote Leland in this case is Leland P. Fitzgerald. As played with a certain beyond-his-years solemness by Ryan Gosling, Leland is a high school loner with a nondescript divorced mother (Lena Olin) and a globe-trotting absentee father (Kevin Spacey), who, as a famed novelist, seems as equally proud of being considered a bastard as he is of being considered a genius. Though from a privileged family that is somewhat less than perfect, Leland seems to be a really nice sixteen-year-old. But, as THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND eventually gets around to making clear, it seems that Leland, despite having a gentle and quiet soul, has violently and inexplicably murdered a mentally impaired teenage boy, who also happened to be the younger brother of the girl Leland had been seeing. The question -- as Leland redundantly points out -- is "why?" The answer which seems apparent as the story ultimately unfolds is that the hapless and despondent Leland sees himself in the young autistic boy and the act is a form of suicide. He assumes that Ryan feels the same emptiness, isolation and worthlessness and therefore would be better off dead, but the one Leland really wanted to see die was Leland. It doesn't take a Freud to piece this together, though the film never quite gets around to finding this conclusion as writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge is too busy dissecting the concept to the American family and chopping the institution into jagged, disconnected little pieces.Despite a title that promises unity and a storyline that seems to be seeking honesty, understanding and forgiveness, LELAND -- as is the way of most modern drama seeking "truth" -- gives way to predictable cynicism and a frustrating lack of insight. Unity is the last thing the film seeks, instead giving us glimpses of people and families in various states of disintegration. Most specifically, the Pollards, the family of the young boy that Leland murders. The film introduces the Pollard family piecemeal, taking its time to establish that the various characters are even related at all. There is a suggestion that they are a typical upper-middle-class suburban family, but by the end the feeling is that they are little more than related strangers living in the same house. Rather that having a death in the family bring them together, it only seems to weaken their tenuous bonds further. I suppose that this is meant to parallel the lack of closeness in Leland's family, but the result only creates an emotional vacuum. The film's message, if indeed it has one, is that family is an illusion -- at least in contemporary America.But the story's chief aim is get viewers to pity poor Leland -- and thanks to Gosling's lowkey performance the character is certainly ingratiating enough. But the film tries to convince us that the real victim here is not the kid he killed, but Leland himself, that Leland is so very, very special that his facing judgement for his crime is somehow unjust. To this end, the film dishonestly downplays not just the crime, but the true victim; granting young Ryan Pollard (Michael Welch) little screen time to either be recognized as a character or to garner viewer sympathy. Perhaps the intent was to show how life has marginalized Ryan because he is autisitic (that's how Leland sees him), but in all likelihood, the filmmakers just didn't want Ryan competing with Leland for sympathy, because Leland would surely lose. But trivializing the younger boy's importance in the story backfires; by refusing to create anything more than vague parallels between the boys, the film denies the only logic that would give it any depth. THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND is a well acted and superficially well directed, but like Leland P. Fitzgerald, it is strangely unemotional, cold and empty.