This review is going to mainly going to be about the Portrayal of James Dean and not the other elements of the movie so I'll get right to it. To put it frankly, I didn't buy Dane Dehaan as James Dean. The resemblance just isn't there. This is a role where looks matter and Dane Dehaan can't really fill the James Dean 'silhoutte' or bring the stature and good looks needed to pull off James Dean. The characters James Dean played in his movies were all studs because James Dean was in fact a total stud. No offense to Dane Dehaan but we've never seen him play a stud before. Most of his roles are teenaged characters who are troubled, quiet and kind of physically unintimidating and prone to getting bullied . Not exactly James Dean material.
We didn't really get James Dean here. It was basically just watching Dane Dehaan play an aloof young guy who sounds kind of like Kermit the frog and acts like a stoner burnout. You can't really get edgy and charismatic James Dean from Dane Dehaan. As good as an actor the guy is he just couldn't really pull it off for this role.
The rest of the movie isn't worth saying much about even though good efforts were made all around. With the right actor playing James Dean this could have been a good movie maybe even a great one depending on the performance. If you stuck around till the end they show the pictures of the real James Dean which was the real pay off of the movie for me.
