Terri

Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is fat. Beyond chubby, he’s actually obese. He wears pyjamas to high school in Anytown, USA, ‘for comfort’. He lives with his seemingly dying uncle, whose mood swings daily; he is predictably withdrawn and sensitive. Facing aggressive classmates and an indifferent teacher, he becomes the focus of the principal, Mr Fitzgerald (John C Reilly is always good). They schedule weekly meetings to stay abreast of Terri’s truancy.

Terri soon discovers he is in a select corps of ‘defective’ students, who come with either wheelchairs or nasty, peculiar habits. One such is Chad (Bridger Zadina), who for some reason yanks his hair out, strand by strand. The two guys end up getting along. Complicating things, however, is Terri’s witnessing of a highly inappropriate act involving a boy and the most attractive girl on campus, Heather (Olivia Crocicchia).

Having an understandable crush on her, Terri intervenes with Mr Fitzgerald to halt her expulsion from school. A sense of gratitude (among many complex feelings) eventually leads her to his peculiar, vaguely creepy house. Hearing of some ‘pussy’, Chad is on the way too and it’s not long before the most awkward group of three high school students is assembled under the roof of a wheezing, moribund uncle.

What ensues is vulnerable teenage angst, acted out with some unexpected and some predictable consequences. We learn a lot more about all three of them; most importantly, I found my former school self reflected to some degree in all of them. Director Azazal Jacobs is able to achieve some poignancy, but it is isolated and erratic, rather than cohesive and elegant.

The sound is Dolby 5.1 and the video transfer is clean. There are no significant features except the trailer, which is a shame. I enjoyed Terri, but not ecstatically. It is a low-budget quiet achiever which had room to grow further but did not manage to.