The Rehearsal

A sensitive, thoughtful, often provocative movie that nevertheless feels like a missed opportunity.

Feels like a handful of sketches in need of more connection.

Your mileage may vary, but for myself "The Rehearsal" delivers a good hour and a half of engagement and intrigue only to top it off with a cherry that left me asking "Really?"

Maclean asks tough questions about the craft of acting and the behavior of administrators who would rather collect donor checks for new facilities than do the right thing for their students.

Such a hodgepodge of arthouse references, arch distancing effects, and emotionally vacant wide-screen compositions that one could easily mistake it for an awkward debut film.

"The Rehearsal" can't help but follow its characters as their actions become more irrational and occasionally overwrought, but like them it's redeemed by a simple yet bravura closing sequence

The film is enlivened by an uncommon depiction of young people behaving and interacting in a believable manner, and confidently builds to a (literal) showstopper ending that's both rousing and hard-won.

It is a film that will leave people talking, I have no doubt. Hopefully one of those discussions is about why it took Alison Maclean so long to make another film. 18 years is too long to wait.

The diffuse nature of the narrative, the way in which the film sometimes seems reluctant to focus, makes it something other than the simpler, more direct, more obvious movie that it might have been-a spectacle of the pedagogic urge to destroy.

Mildly engaging and intriguing with a solid performance by the charismatic, underrated Kerry Fox.

This affecting story of one lad's personal and artistic growth is one of the very best acting-school films.

Filmed in New Zealand with a Kiwi director and performers, this "Rehearsal" is "Fame" without the Hollywood glitz.