Title: Maturing Youth
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Director: Divoni Simon
Starring: Sean A. Kaufman, Kim Paris, Mickey Damon
Runtime: 13 mins

What It Is: Roger (Kaufman) is a complete and total slacker. He’s jobless, ambitionless and now over 30. When his ex-girlfriend Sadie (Paris) shows up and states that her small child Junior (Joshua St. Leger) is also his. This is new news to him and he’s certainly not in a position to take care of a child. When he’s visited by a strange doctor after Junior falls ill his whole life will change, but will it be for the better, or the worse?

What We Think: This is a pretty good short. Most of the acting is serviceable indeed. Narratively this short moves along with a bit of a plod. Roger is really unlikeable, but he’s supposed to be. I think that Kim Paris, who’s not in a ton of the short is a bit too flat. Look, working with child actors can be difficult and I think Simon does a good job at directing the children as little Mickey Damon isn’t an awful mess. Where it lags is in its central story and that’s no fault of director Divoni Simon.

Our Grade: C+, Check it out if you can find it. That, perhaps, might be the biggest challenge. I don’t know what the distribution is on this short but the production reached out to us to check it out and here we are. Thanks to them for trusting us with a link to it. Come for the runtime stay for the interesting story, told in a rather unconventional way. You might think you understand where the film is going, and I doubt you will, but even if you do you won’t grasp HOW the story is told. It’s 13 minutes you won’t regret.