Towelhead (2008)
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 114
Fresh: 55 | Rotten: 59
This story of politics, race and, sexual awakening has moments that pack a punch, but overall, Towelhead never quite achieves the nuance of helmer Alan Ball's television work.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 18 | Rotten: 19
This story of politics, race and, sexual awakening has moments that pack a punch, but overall, Towelhead never quite achieves the nuance of helmer Alan Ball's television work.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 4,384
Movie Info
Six Feet Under creator and American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball makes his feature directorial debut with this screen adaptation of author Alicia Erian's controversial novel Towelhead. Jasira (Summer Bishil) is a 13-year-old Arab-American who's contending with the pains of adolescence when her life takes a sudden and unexpected turn. Sent to live with her stern Lebanese father, Rifat (Peter Macdissi), by her self-absorbed mother (Maria Bello), Jasira finds herself struggling to adjust to life
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Cast
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Summer Bishil
Jasira -
Peter Macdissi
Rifat -
Aaron Eckhart
Mr. Vuoso -
Toni Collette
Melina -
Maria Bello
Gail -
Eugene Jones
Thomas -
Chase Ellison
Zack -
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All Critics (117) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (55) | Rotten (59) | DVD (10)
As a director [Ball] amplifies the flaws in his own writing; his supporting characters are too broadly pitched to take seriously, and he tends to smack you in the face with the point of every scene.
Top CriticThere is hardly a scene that does not produce exquisite discomfort and a strong desire to be somewhere else.
It wasn't enjoyable at any level.
This movie will challenge you on a number of levels, including some beliefs you'd never thought you'd question.
It is certainly possible to make a transgressive movie about children in sexual jeopardy, and to do so in ways that realistically and intelligently depict the abuse while not revelling in it.
It's impossible to look away.
Towelhead isn't a movie, it's a loaded gun.
The discomfort zones of a young girl cry for sympathetic toughness, not Ball's snickering at pubic hair and clammy suburbanites
A philosophy of the appeal of innocence and perversion in a repressed world...
Few may have paid attention during its theatrical run, but DVD should offer a whole new life to a smart, engaging film that genuinely has something worthwhile to say.
Towelhead makes "American Beauty" look like a quaint suburban drama.
Deftly sidesteps the muckraking and instead serves up an affecting drama about a lovely child who can't seem to catch a break from most of the adults surrounding her.
Ball drops the poisonous little voodoo dolls he mistakes for characters into a ... realistic environment, as though that will somehow render his story more "serious."
An empty provocation that's about as classy and subtle as its title.
It is a multicultural Lolita that searches for, but still manages to miss, any redemptive core its source material may boast.
Ball knows how to fit his themes in seamlessly, weaving a charming, dark, funny, thoroughly entertaining parody of Americana.
Give Bishil props for a truly brave performance. Eckhart and Macdissi do what they can, as does Toni Collette as a concerned neighbor who tries to save Jasira from Eckhart. But the script isn't up to the actors.
It makes sense that the scenes are pitched between icky and titillating, but the lack of delicacy reduces everything to stock sordidness.
Brings up some interesting points, but it's also too eager to shock and too eager to condemn.
Audience Reviews for Towelhead
Super Reviewer
"Towelhead" has some very interesting subject matter and has many very courageous aspects. It tells the story of a 13-year-old suburban girl of mixed Lebanese and white American heritage coming to terms with many things, including the break-up of her parents, her suddenly surging sexual desire, and anti-Middle Eastern prejudice.
Initially, I thought the film was going to be a send-up of the way semi-educated Americans perceive Middle Easterners. There's certainly plenty of that. But the center of the film is the girl's emerging sexuality. A major sequence depicts her learning to give herself orgasms, for example. We also see her exploring pornography and learning to flirt with both boys and men. What's perhaps most interesting is how the adults around her react.
This is very interesting subject matter. The original novel was written by an American woman of Middle Eastern descent (Alicia Erian), and it was intended not for titillation but for serious artistic exploration of the sexual side of life and the difficulties girls face in exploring their sexualities. Alan Ball, in adapting the screenplay, takes the subject matter seriously as well.
The problem is that the direction is horrendously flat and bland. Its style is also relentlessly television-like. It is obvious that Ball spent the 10 years leading up to the project completely immersed in television. After about an hour, I could barely watch it any longer. The editing is also so bad that the film ends up repeating itself over and over. The screenwriting also often seems unsure of what it wants to say or even explore. It's often also just flat-out boring.
Bottom line: great subject matter, weak film adaptation.
Super Reviewer
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Movie: ID: 770771087 Title: Towelhead Release Date: 2007-09-08 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 4 Status: 1
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This is the feel-good movie of the year if your idea of a great date movie is Bastard out of Carolina. At every plot turn, director and co-writer Alan Ball's film gets more and more disturbing. It packs in themes of sexual abuse and growing sexual maturity with themes of racism and parenthood. And while Toni Collette's character is supposed to be the liberal moral center of the film, most of the characters are so remarkably distasteful that no matter how hard Ball tries to make us see them as real, flawed people, the film comes off as disturbing for disturbing's sake. I suppose the film tries to present the American Dream as a flawed notion tainted by racism, leaving children as its most vulnerable victims, but instead the film merely amounts to a collection of atrocities.
The performances are all good. I haven't seen Aaron Eckhart play not-Aaron-Eckhart until this film, and Summer Bishil gives a wise-beyond-her-years portrayal of Jasira, the victim of the film's worst events.
Overall, this is a great film if you want to hate everything for a while.