1-800-Hot-Nite

This was like the boy version of Thirteen or Speak, but for the current generation. I was born in 1993, so it's been a long time since middle school. I still remembered how it was watching the new generation, and I felt so bad for kids as they suffered physical abuse and crazy adults.

This film is perfect for anyone who likes gritty realistic films. It's definitely about kids of today, but they made it timeless in a way too. It reminded me of my time, even if I was in suburbia, not a city.

Parents should watch this with their kids, even if they live a completely different life. So many kids suffer in situations like this.

Growing up isn't always a straight path, and some are forced to grow up sooner than others. The young characters in this film were forced to deal with heavy issues and grow up in front of our eyes. The script is deft at blending the very real lightness that can come with being a kid, with the heavy realities of their home lives. You believe their journey and the emotions are palpable. The actors are incredible and three boys have a chemistry that is so fun to watch. Ali Richey as Ava, portrayed a woman who has lived a hard life but still has a soft side. Her connection with Tommy (played by Dallas Young), starts as pure comedy. As in real life, however, you never know who will be there when you need it. Watching their connection was powerful. This film is well acted and writing/directing from Nick Richey demonstrates incredible talent! This was a powerful film with a lot of passion behind it. Recommend highly!

1-800-HOTNITE is a bad movie, but at least it is an innocent badness, as the filmmakers, financiers and producers behind it that allowed this dud to move forward seem to be clueless about the basics of story telling, mis-en-scene, and movie making.

We were looking forward to this film as traditionally the films at Deauville are of a certain high standard having premiered at other top-tier festivals prior to their Deauville stop. But Deauville for some reason made an exception here by choosing a film that is poorly written and directed, only made somewhat tolerable by up and coming Dallas Young who plays Tommy.

In 1-800-HOT-NITE, Tommy loses his father to a drug raid and then embarks on a night of improbable adventure that leaves the viewer feeling bored and frustrated. The story goes nowhere so it is hard to pay attention throughout but I did my best to hang in there till the end.

Writer and Director Nick Richey makes a lot of errors. For starters my husband and I still can't tell if the film is set in the 80's , 90's or in modern times because the lead character makes calls from old American telephone booths and corded land lines, and interacts with police driving old police cars, but the entire film feels like it is set at a time when phone booths are obsolete and everyone has a cell phone.

The dialog is either boring or pointless. For example, the characters comment on each other's clothes with great emphasis even though there is absolutely nothing remarkable about their clothes. Perhaps the only line of dialog that is compelling in the film is it's title "1-800-HOT-NITE" as it sort of hooked us to check it out.

1-800-HOT-NITE has the appearance of an amateur film that was made with dialog improvisation on set after characters are placed in situations that are unnatural. Tommy decides to collect money for some paper route (hello 90's again! Or maybe even 70's!) late at night and in cash, something that would most likely lead to nothing, but in Richey's thoughtless script, this decision by Tommy triggers the most improbable responses from other characters who apparently are on Tommy's paper route that he somehow walks to door to door late into the night.

Are all these paper route characters all in one city block readily available to open their doors to Tommy to give him cash for a paper route after midnight? Or is Tommy able to teleport himself from one door to the next? I suppose any unbelievable occurrence is possible with a script that has no sense of time or place.

Watched at the Deauville Film Festival. A coming-of-age stay about 3 LA teens, CONGRATS to Dallas, Garrison and Mylen, their performances are awesome. Loved their acting especially Garrison and Dallas, and Mylen was great too. But the biggest problem here is that the movie lacks a solid script, the films is an addition of scenes and situations in LA where our 3 heroes are lost, but there's no really involvement, so no emotion, identification and there is not a clear objective for the kids (for instance, there's one very strong in "Stand by me"). This makes the film slow and unclear, about its intentions.

In addition, there are holes, unrealistic, unnatural situations and character's behaviors, especially the phone operator's behavior is not realistic. The dark/orange cinematography and lighting is great in some scenes, and full of mistakes in others. For instance, at some point the kid is sitting in a very dark room with no light, and talking to a woman, who is lit as if the room was full of lights, it could have been better. There are similar light problems throughout the film.

It just could have been better, the movie could have deserved a 6-8/10, we can feel how passionate the crew is, but it definitely a much better script.

I didn't expect this movie to be that good , honestly I didn't understand the low ratings but as a kid this was a great coming of age , the script wasn't a problem , I felt this was a kid having learning about the real world in a hard way .. at first I thought it was going to be a comedy ( like super bad American pie etc etc ) but no it was more of David Clark's ( kids) not as vulgar but that same type of feel ... as a kid you think you have the answers and think life hits one way but in reality it doesn't ... live is hard , in one night one little boy learns almost every life lesson you can learn in a life time , friends , love, people , adults and cold reality. I really enjoyed this movie in my opinion it's something new compared to what's been coming out lately.