The star’s first foray into film-making is a sweet, if flawed, attempt to recapture the spirit of 80s kids adventures buoyed by a charismatic turn from Lonnie Chavis
When an experienced
Actor steps behind the scenes to become a multi-hyphenate, one usually assumes their directorial debut will have a revealing, if often self-indulgent, autobiographical element. But as much as we might have learned about Greta Gerwig from Lady Bird or Viggo Mortensen from this year’s Falling, there’s arguably more to unpack when a star decides to go entirely off-piste to tell someone else’s story. Bradley Cooper’s crowd-pleasing remake of
A Star Is Born and Ben Affleck’s troubling, muscular adaptation of Gone Baby Gone showed them to be serious, ambitious film-makers with lofty aspirations whereas Ryan Gosling’s disastrous Cannes flop Lost River revealed him as someone who’s spent too much time pretentiously fanboying over Nicolas Winding-Refn.
Related: True Mothers review: Naomi Kawase's heartfelt yet frustrating drama