Laura’s Star – Great Visuals, Terrible Everything Else

You never feel like anything’s ever getting anywhere for a start. I’d go as far as to say there is not real story. It is also one of the laziest uses of the “kid moves to new place” trope I’ve ever seen. It thinks just moving the girl and have her sulking around the place is enough. 

There are no consequences for actions – whether good, bad, or neutral. This not only gives terrible messages but it means your levels of care drop to about minus twenty or something. Most of the film, and most of its characters could be dropped and very little would have to be changed to reach the same outcome. The whole thing could easily have been done within fifteen minutes, or barely stretched to twenty five to be a similar length to other like Christmas specials if necessary if they just made something happen. 

The ending is a cop out, a genre shift, unearned, far too surreal (for the film itself, I mean), and makes absolutely no sense. So there’s not even any reward for sticking around. 

There is very little characterisation for any characters, and everything they do anything it is completely pointless. Oh, and we’ve got that creative type overly obviously based on the author protagonist again. Yeah, only do characters based on yourself if you can break the mould and can be as objective about your own attributes as someone else’s. It’s just painful otherwise.

This movie makes you feel absolutely nothing, in a way that is active like depression. It’s attempting to be magical (if this movie even knows that word) but it falling at the first hurdle, and you come to the conclusion that too much of what should have been great about remained in the creators head and never came out.