Take every awful indie coming-of-age movie cliché, cram it into one film, fill it with terrible dialogue and bored-looking actors and you are starting to approach the disaster that is Gavin Wisenâs Homework. If someone were making a parody of the modern art-house coming-of-age film, this would be it. Despite a relatively-short 84 minute runtime, Homework is an interminable slog as weâre forced to suffer yet another movie about a privileged teenage whoâs life is so perfect that heâs forced to conjure his own misfortune.George (Freddie Highmore) is a slacker that has come upon a wacky reason not to do his homework: fatalism. Since heâs going to die anyway, his trigonometry assignments donât seem that important. Why is he so depressed? Does he come from a broken homelife? Not really. He lives in a nice brownstone in New York City, but his stepfather is kind of a jerk. Does he have some dark secret in his past? Who knows. He was birthed into this world arty and misunderstood. He was also blessed with eye-rollingly bad dialogue such as:âIâm afraid of life.ââIâm a misanthrope, but not by choice.ââIâm allergic to hormones.ââIâm in love with you. I always have been.âHighmore doesnât have a prayer of convincingly spouting lines like these, and he deserves credit for not wincing while he said them.While George is busy doodling and being uninteresting, he begins a friendship with Sally (Emma Roberts), but starts to fall for her because sheâs pretty andâ¦sheâs pretty. I would call her character paper-thin but thatâs insult to the thickness of paper and the fine people who make it. George also begins a relationship with Dustin, a professional artist (Michael Angarano). Their ârelationshipâ consists of two scenes where Dustin gives George advice.Homework could exist as a scathing parody of the indie coming-of-age film, but instead it serves as a laundry list of the worst qualities the genre has to offer. It takes over an hour for the film to find a real conflict for George, and by that point weâre too far gone to care. Wisen gives his debut feature no voice, no personality, and no reason to exist.Rating: FFor all of our coverage of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, click here. Also, here are links to all of my Sundance reviews so far: