Joseph a new arrival at a school in Ireland has his first day in class and finds himself a target for bullying
Another Oscar nominated short but not one I've been blown away with . I should quickly add however that some of the shorts I've been treated to have been genuinely outstanding and have really raised the bar of my expectations . There's not much wrong with NEW BOY in itself just that it pales slightly in comparison with some others
Based upon a short story by Roddy Doyle it has a somewhat fractured storyline where it cuts from Rwanda in the very near recent past to contemporary Ireland . Where as some shorts draw you in and then twist your expectations 360 degrees this is one starts off hard edged and gritty then perhaps predictably feels the need to give the audience a nice warm feeling by the end which you can probably see coming as I did and it's a little bit too obvious . Despite it does have a trump card in the shape of Olutunji Ebun Cole and it's not often you see a child actor carry a film who hardly has a word of dialogue to speak . In fact considering nearly all the cast are child actors and if you feel like strangling them that's because you're supposed to want to strangle them so unlike some child actors they universally play their parts well
