Choose Connor

After a promising start, this political drama becomes so unnecessarily tawdry that it dilutes its powerful message about the perils of youthful idealism. Socially awkward but bright 15-year-old Owen Norris (Alex Linz) impresses local politician and Senatorial candidate Lawrence Connor (Steven Weber), who asks the boy to join his campaign. Owen’s enthusiasm evaporates, however, when he learns that Connor is involved with a ring of gay pedophiles. Erstwhile teen actor Luke Eberl—who wrote, directed and edited this film at age 21—shows great promise and rates kudos for bringing an ambitious project to completion. But he lets himself get sidetracked by the nascent sex scandal and lavishes too much time on the relationship between Owen and Connor’s nephew (well played by Escher Holloway), watering down the movie’s cynical take on the political system.

Shelf Talk: Choosing Connor might have done better if released during the 2008 election season, but Strand has enough confidence in the film to market it with a national online and print campaign, with impressions in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time Out, TV Guide, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook, among others. News items and reviews tagging Eberl as an Orson Welles-like prodigy are bound to stimulate curiosity and should prove beneficial.