You've seen this film before. You have!
Well, maybe not this exact one, but you've seen all its components in other movies - just in a different order perhaps.
Let's have a look at those components:
Elegiac film about a last summer of innocence? Check!
A sensitive aspiring writer whose best friends seems to be unlikely choices? Check!
A sensitive aspiring writer who wants to leave his small minded, small town? Check!
And those best friends - is one a bland but pleasant enough character who is really just a means of allowing us to hear the sensitive writer's thoughts, and does the other one provide comic relief? Check?
And although the friends say that they too want to escape town, does it become clear that they don't because they are suited to small-town life and will never leave? Of course!
How about a seemingly unattainable girl who barely notices the sensitive writer? Yep, got one of those!
Does she have a two-dimensional insensitive brute of a boyfriend who is an obstacle standing in the way of true love but who mysteriously seems to have convinced the girl he should her boyfriend? You bet!
I know. What about a wild animal that acts as a metaphor for freedom and may or may not have some kind of metaphysical role as well? From start to finish!
Add to this a script that treats the female characters as nothing more than cyphers; completely lacking any kind of inner life, some 'they all look the same' racist stereotyping, and an ending, rounding off two very long hours, that helps tie up the loose ends but which is morally very suspect indeed, and you have As I Am (Philophobia, in some markets).
I was being very generous when I gave the film six points. Really, don't bother.
