Of all the movies on Apple TV, and I've seen all but one now, "Hala" was the one that I struggled to get through the most. I really like Geraldine Viswanathan and though I felt I understood at times where this movie might be going, I felt like the plot kept shifting to a different story and at the conclusion I wasn't sure why anyone would have thought to tell it.
Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a Pakistani-American teenager caught between the conservative nature of her Muslim upbringing and the temptation of "freedom" with the American culture. Strongly against the wishes of her parents, she begins a secret relationship with Jesse (Jack Kilmer) a boy in her English class. Then she learns a secret about her father that could threaten her families very existence.
I am not going to begin to approach discussion of the accuracy of the film in portraying the experience of a teenage Muslim girl, as I can't begin to relate, I can only talk about how I felt watching the movie. I felt like everytime we came close to seeing what the film was about, it whipped the plot out from underneath us and said "no, we're about this now". She is willing to risk the wraith of her parents to spend time with Jesse, they have one disappointing sexual encounter and then he's gone, never to be addressed again. Her fathers secret threatens to be the plot for about ten minutes, then we have another plot involving her teacher that literally comes out of nowhere. Each of these plot strands is either unconcluded or unearned in the first place and I came away at the end of the film literally thinking "why". Why does this movie exist? It neither offers a unique perspective of a situation, nor tells a compelling story.
The performances are decent but not enough on their own to cover for a jumbled and baffling plot.
Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan) is a Pakistani-American teenager caught between the conservative nature of her Muslim upbringing and the temptation of "freedom" with the American culture. Strongly against the wishes of her parents, she begins a secret relationship with Jesse (Jack Kilmer) a boy in her English class. Then she learns a secret about her father that could threaten her families very existence.
I am not going to begin to approach discussion of the accuracy of the film in portraying the experience of a teenage Muslim girl, as I can't begin to relate, I can only talk about how I felt watching the movie. I felt like everytime we came close to seeing what the film was about, it whipped the plot out from underneath us and said "no, we're about this now". She is willing to risk the wraith of her parents to spend time with Jesse, they have one disappointing sexual encounter and then he's gone, never to be addressed again. Her fathers secret threatens to be the plot for about ten minutes, then we have another plot involving her teacher that literally comes out of nowhere. Each of these plot strands is either unconcluded or unearned in the first place and I came away at the end of the film literally thinking "why". Why does this movie exist? It neither offers a unique perspective of a situation, nor tells a compelling story.
The performances are decent but not enough on their own to cover for a jumbled and baffling plot.