BEAUTIFUL BOY

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Insufferable. Debut feature director/co-writer Shawn Ku pretends to examine the emotional fallout for a pair of parents after their not-so-"beautiful" boy Sam (Kyle Gallner) takes a semi-automatic weapon to his fellow college classmates and then offs himself.

Playing a couple whose marriage is dissolving, Maria Bello and Michael Sheen are good actors stuck with a lousy script. Kate (Bello) and Bill (Sheen) live a cultureless suburban life. He's a workaholic and she works at home on a spellchecking assignment for a novelist.

Rather than hashing out their son's devastatingly tragic actions, as a normal couple might be expected to do, the pair barely talk about it.

The screenwriters don't dare write the tear-filled conversations that ought to make up the meat of this weak drama. Not even the most emotionally unavailable people in the world could be so removed. They go on the lam to escape the press permanently camped in front of their gloomy home.

After wearing out their welcome at the home of Kate's brother, with his wife and child, they live at a motel where they eat dinner from the vending machines and have sex.

"Beautiful Boy" is depressingly amateurish. If you're going to make your audience feel bad for two hours, you had better let them know why. If the screenwriters are going to throw their audience into such a deep-end drama, they should at least be able to swim themselves. This movie simply sinks.

Rated R. 100 mins.

Zero Stars