Terri

Director: Azazel Jacobs
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.0

A portly teen with a feminized name (Jacob Wysocki) befriends his school assistant principal (John C. Reilly), a hair-picking weirdo (Bridger Zadina) and a pretty girl-turned-outcast (Olivia Crocicchia): it's all about 'knowing your peer group' and making peace with your place in the social order. There isn't much in it to differentiate this from most outsider teen movies (and certainly nothing to put it in the same hemisphere as the great TV show Freaks and Geeks) and aside from some well-written interactions between Wysocki and Reilly and the awkward seduction scene with Wysocki, Zadina and Crocicchia (which is painful to watch ... but in a true sort of way), it almost seems to leave its lead where he started, only with a bit more of a smile. That's not a whole lot of progress. I would have hoped someone would have advised him to actually take up a weight-loss regimen that includes a better diet and more exercise ... as Dr. Steve Brule would say: "For your health!"