Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

BroadcastChic Excellent, a Must See

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

sahubbell3 Like other reviewers, I'm a HUGE JG-L fan. And Natalie Portman, of course. The whole cast does a great job, so my intense dislike of this movie has nothing to do with them.I found this movie to be ugly, ridiculous, and pointless. And if there's anything comedic about it, I've apparently had a brain aneurysm because I'm totally missing that part.The premise of "Hesher" is ludicrous as presented. Sure, it can be done - it has been done. "Down and Out in Beverly Hills', anyone? "What About Bob?" Remember? Taking a farcical approach to the "stranger upends family" trope is fine when it's a comedy. But a big part of the formula is that the stranger has to have at least a FEW redeeming qualities. If the stranger is a sociopathic character like Hesher, then it seems like the film would fit more naturally into a drama/horror genre'. Because I've got to tell you - I didn't crack a smile during this movie. Not ONCE.Every character is pathetic or repulsive. Every action taken is ugly and violent. The setting is ugly and DEPRESSING (then again, I've never liked SoCal.) And the seminal figure - dead mom - is only known by one flashback scene, supposedly the day she was killed in a car accident. She is seen as a warm, supportive mother and wife. But even that heartwarming vision doesn't comport with the rest of the movie. We're supposed to believe in a two-month span that Dad has grown a massively bushy beard, become a pill-popper, and that he and the kid moved into sick, dotty grandma's trashy and cramped house? We're supposed to think that TJ was a relatively normal kid prior to mom's death, then suddenly becomes the victim of a pathologically vicious bully - and no adult knows or cares about it? (I am not counting Hesher because I'm not sure he does count as an adult.) TJ has access to wads of cash via ATM (why???) and chooses to try and buy the wrecked car - even though he knows he can't - instead of offering check-out girl more than $2 when she can't even pay her RENT? Seriously, whaaa? Not everything in a movie has to make sense, but in "Thresher", NOTHING makes sense. The "message" it seems the audience is supposed to take away can be had in 25 other, much better movies.Sorry, JG-L, most of your projects are fantastic. But this one is a swing and a miss!

herostratus-690-719695 The essence of this movie: do not live in the past but rather in the future - forget about your losses and be happy about what you still have. Unfortunately, this is the only "deeper" meaning that this movie does offer, and it needs almost two hours of the viewer's precious lifetime to display it. What a loss. I watched it in the car while driving from S.F. to L.A., but still it was a waste of time - I should have watched the landscape instead, passing by the window. Maybe because of the meager, stingy screenplay the producers hired some well-known actors to compensate for the loss? Maybe because many ordinary people don't like metal-maniacs like "The Hesher" (or should I say "The Thrasher"?) this movie depicts some average heavy-metal-moron as the wise-guy. Not that I personally have got anything against metal music or it's fans, but this movie seemed to me as some sort of counter-propaganda - which makes it even worse because of it's diapositive discrimination: if it is important to brush up the image of the metal-music-guy by displaying a long-haired metal-berserk who looks like Jesus having fun destroying other people's property, then what picture of such people do we have in mind – and does this movie change it? But what definitely makes this whole stupid concoction the sorry and pathetic effort it just is are it's lousy "dialogues" (which in truth are usually monologues): not only that there is a total absence of wit in all the babble that is puffed out here, no, it is most of the time total annoyance. Like an insult to any intelligent person. One could do many better things than watching this total waste of time that tells us - in an as stupid as senseless manner - platitudes we already know.

Gordon-11 This film is about a young boy who has a strange relationship with a punk rebel, and also a crush on a shopkeeper.Despite having Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon Levitt on board, "Hesher" is a terrible mess. The plot is almost non existent, with characters disconnected with each other and with the viewers. The characters often asking each other "What are you doing?". When even the characters don't know what they are doing, how are the viewers supposed to know what they are doing? Hesher is a very psychopathic character, he is so unlikable that I generalise the hatred to the whole film. The boy and his family is so non assertive that they can't even stop Hesher from taking advantage from them. Natalie Portman looks nerdy in the film, wasting her good looks. In short, "Hesher" is a disjointed film featuring disconnected characters. Please avoid it.

samkan Hesher is fun to watch with some comical and touching scenes. All the actors perform very well, especially Devon Brochu, the young man at the center of the film and especially Piper Laurie as his grandmother. Gordon-Levitt's character's actions are funny but confusing: They're inconsistent with reality, well beyond plausibility. Unless there are no police in the subject area of California one cannot understand how Hesher continues to exist. Yet the film is not comical, surrealistic or forgiving enough to overcome such exaggeration. But by applying an undeserved suspension of reality the acting fused with the comic -and sometimes poignant- scenes will pull you in. If you're like me, merely finishing a film on Netflix assigns it merit. Pretentious Spencer Susser got lucky. Hesher is not the insightful masterpiece he may think it is, though it succeeds for other reasons.