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Joe the King (1999)

Rate: 4
Viewed: 3/24

JoeKi
3/24: Same shit, different decade.

It's Les quatre cents coups all over again which is better known as The 400 Blows. I was actually unsure for the longest time if Frank Whaley ripped off the film for Joe the King until the ending which sealed my conclusion. It's when the boy walked in the hallway until turning around and the shot of his face was frozen. That's how it happened to Antoine Doinel at the beach.

The hack director claimed his film was "based largely on his own childhood and the childhood of his brother." Yeah, sure...he meant to say he saw Les quatre cents coups once too many times. The story is exactly the same, and hence, there's no originality.

Anyway, save for Val Kilmer who won't win any popularity contest after what he did to the boy, everybody tries too hard. Nothing works. The film is cyclic every ten minutes, making the long running length pointless. There's hardly anyone around which is a sure sign of its low budget.

All in all, if you had seen Les quatre cents coups, then you already saw Joe the King without having done so.