Film Review: We the Animals

Where the wild things draw

Evan Rosado as Jonah in We the Animals.

Racing, clawing, screaming, drumming, dreaming their way through an impoverished childhood are three young boys at the center of Jeremiah Zagar’s heartfelt but lacking film We the Animals.

Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Justin Torres, Zagar’s film locates its heart, its head, and its attitude squarely with Jonah, played by Evan Rosado.  As the youngest of three boys, Jonah prefers drawing to fighting, and dreaming to adolescent scheming. In upstate New York, where Jonah and his brothers play out their childhoods, dangerous overpasses become impromptu playgrounds, and wild runs through the woods can take up whole afternoons. TV, video games, even radios are nowhere to be found. These are semi-feral boys left to their own devices for long periods of time.

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