America is about a teenager named (wait for it...) America, played by first-timer Philip Johnson, who comes from multiple ethnic backgrounds and unfortunately is a product of the broken foster care system in the USA. While he is under the care of the foster home, he struggles with his troubled past and butts heads with everyone around him including his therapist, played by Rosie O'Donnell.
During his stay, America meets many people that I assume are supposed to be interesting characters and supposed to offer a unique view of how foster life affects the youth of today. All of the characters, except for America, are grossly exaggerated caricatures of teenagers instead of deep and insightful portrayals. One kid is on suicide watch, another has a cutting problem, and the bully has a fixation with branding himself with a red hot piece of metal and none of them ever do anything more than how their diagnosis defines them.
Now, I singled out America because while all of the other inmates in this young adult prison system are one-note clichés, America tips the other end of the believable scale so far that it is approaches comedic proportions. I know that this movie is trying to have the same impact of young kids like White Oleander and Girl, Interrupted, but it doesn't use anything that made those two movies successful. Namely, it doesn't know when to use moderation. To make something more accessible or to make it connect with teens, you should stick with one or two personal demons and build off of that. America has around seven unique traumatic events that you are forced to watch and while what happens to him are likely true events that happen to others around the world, the movie is so ham fisted in the way it wants you to sympathize that I laughed every time a needless flashback occurs. Oh and there are plenty of needless flashbacks! I counted a little more than a dozen separate flashbacks throughout this 90 minute movie. It wouldn't be so bad if these flashbacks revealed any relevant information, but seldom do they deliver any exposition. Instead, the visions that America has are fragmented and intentionally vague which only leads to confusion.
America was written, produced, and stars Rosie O'Donnell. Apparently, Rosie read the novel America by E.R. Frank during a flight and was so enamored with it, she wrote the screenplay as soon as she landed and called a few friends to make this movie happen. I know the history of Rosie and her agenda to save the foster children in the USA and I respect that and this is to be expected from someone like her. But after watching the single special feature, (which is around nine minutes long), Rosie says that finding the right actor to portray the character America was a unique challenge. She tells the story of how she and the director were having lunch two days before shooting began and they still didn't have a lead. Across the room was a boy who was bi-racial and Rosie knew that America had to be played by him. They approached him (Philip Johnson) and asked him if he wanted to be in a movie and they signed him. He had no form of training, nor had anyone given him any preparation before shooting began. I won't blame him because he didn't know any better, but shame on Rosie for hiring an inexperienced young boy as your lead actor because it set a low standard for the film and everyone else thought it was a higher standard and didn't try to meet it at all in order to let Philip Johnson shine through.
America is a rushed, low-budget, mess of a movie. I appreciate that they took it seriously, but this film is flawed on numerous levels that not even the sweet acting of Ruby Dee, who plays the sweetest old lady, can save it. If you want to help spread awareness about foster children, adopt one instead of watching America, it will be less painful.
