The Forger (2012)

The Forger: Directed by Lawrence Roeck. With Lauren Bacall, Josh Hutcherson, Alfred Molina, Billy Boyd. A teenager wanders into Carmel, California, where he is soon introduced to the art-forgery community.

“This movie does for forgers what the movie Hackers did for hackers, which is attempt to make them look like the mainstream folks in the audience. Oh, sure, they had silly clothes and some goofy quirks but the bottom line was that they were like everyone else, only more so. And just as Hackers was nonsense, so is Forgers. Real hackers didnu0026#39;t sit around bragging about their computersu0026#39; specs like a bunch of boy-racers talking about their engines.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIn fact the Forgers characters are even worse, depicted as talentless con-men or child prodigies who can pick up a brush and dash off a flawless imitation of an old master in a few hours in a gloomy basement.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFor a real insight to the persona of an art forger look up the career of Eric Hebborn, who really did paint stuff that was often mistaken for very valuable pictures. But he never became wealthy as a result of his work and he was not 15 years old at his peak.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSince the story is rather thin, the producers have made it more relevant to the intended audience by adding a drippy love story and a maudlin tale of parental abandonment, made even sillier by casting a 20 year old man for the part of a young boy. He is supposedly a high school freshman and at one point a character states that he thought the boy was u0026quot;maybe 12 years oldu0026quot;. There is no way Mr. Hutcherson would be mistaken for a 12 year old child.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOne wonders why the writers didnu0026#39;t simply make the character a college dropout. The story would have been just as effective and the romantic dialog would have been more believable. The screenplay has all the traits of a work by a committee. Adults will probably find this movie tedious and rather predictable.Younger viewers may enjoy the romantic aspects of the story.”