Growing Op is about a teenager (Yaffee) who’s been home schooled his entire life who wants to just have a normal high school experience at the local suburban school.  The problem with this is hiding his hippie, pot growing parents and their lifestyle from the rest of the world.  While setting out to become more normal he falls for the neighbor girl Crystal (Blanchard; Snakes on a Plane).  Meanwhile the cool kids at school are trying to destroy him.

This is a great example of a movie that squandered some potential.  There’s some good stuff but the bad outweighs it and muddies the water.

I’ll start with the positive.  The character of Crystal is a great example of a boy elevating a girl on a pedestal that no actual person can live up to.  I liked that aspect of the story very much.  I also enjoyed the sister role (Boland; Daydream Nation) who provided the movie’s wit.  Quinn’s father played by CSI’s Wallace Langham is great for some cringeworthy moments that you can empathize with.  He’s probably the best performance in the film.

Now onto the problems.  For my personal tastes Crystal was played a little too air-headed and that overwhelmed a lot of the character’s likeability.  And in general the performances throughout were just so-so.  But the thing that really ruined the entire rest of the movie was the ending.  I won’t go into detail, but it felt completely unnecessary and I just hated it.  It was just bad.  With a different ending I think I would have felt overall a lot more positivity towards the overall film.

Overall I’d say this is just an OK movie.