Delayed Reaction: Rebel Without a Cause

The Pitch: Teens do stupid things.

If you haven't picked up on this by now, I'm filling a lot of holes in my viewing filmography lately, and most of those holes are older films and stars. So, this is my first James Dean movie. There's only three, and I decided to watch the only one that he didn't get an Oscar nomination for. I think my motivation to bump it in the Netflix queue was La La Land-related. That sounds like something I'd do.

James Dean didn't blow me away. He played the role a little too big. Just about everything in this movie was played too big though. Dean's reaction to being called "chicken" is almost comically overblown. Still, it's hard to resist his undeniable charm. Natalie Wood was quite fetching herself too.

I really want to know if knife play and stealing cars for racing purposes was really a thing back then. I assume there's some cases of this, but was it actually a common thing? Every generation does dumb shit, but this seems especially dumb. Or maybe I just don't buy those kids as being that intimidating.

If I'm being honest, I couldn't get into this movie because in the first 10 minutes, one of the supposed protagonists (or at least, a sympathetic character) is in trouble for shooting puppies. Not cool. That torpedoed the rest of the movie for me.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend