With 4 States, 41 counties and municipalities plus the District of Columbia banning gay conversion therapy and others having it on their agenda it was a perfect time for a film dealing with just that subject but “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” isn’t that film to get an audience.

It deals with Cameron, a teenager, caught in the back of an automobile with another girl, Coley, their panties down, and going at ‘it’ at the prom where they had been taken by their boyfriends. Nothing happens to Coley but the consequences for Cameron are that she is sent to God’s Promise camp, one of the many known ‘pray away the gay’ around the States.

The topic of whether you are born Gay or learn to be ‘that way’ is discussed very briefly but since this is a ‘Christian’ place God and the Devil are part of a lot of the conversations by the adults. At 90 minutes ‘Miseducation’ moves very slowly with very little drama, except, of course, how we can have a Christian film about gays without one committing suicide! (No it’s not a spoiler.)

A big problem with the movie is the stereotyping of gay people by the screenwriters Desiree Akhavan, who also directed, and Cecillia Frugiuele. One lost their parents in a crash years before and is being raised by an aunt and uncle while another, who lost a leg in an accident, was born in commune and is Black while a third is a Native American Indian who was born into a tribe that recognizes a third gender but their father has become a politician and converted to Christianity. There is a boy who is too feminine for his father and a girl who is the boy her father never had, raising her to be a sports fan, as I said, all the stereotypes, no one having a ‘normal’ background so being born gay is really a non-issue.

The acting by the 12-14 kids can’t be faulted with Chloe Grace Moretz as Cameron, Sasha Lane who goes by the name of ‘Jane Fonda’, Forrest Goodluck as Adam, Emily Skeggs as Erin and Owen Campbell as Mark, the standouts with Coley acted by Quinn Shephard.

Among the adults are John Gallagher Jr. as Reverend Rick, a man ‘saved and finding God’ in a gay bar whose sister Dr. Lydia Marsh, a Christian psychologist, played by Jennifer Ehle, who runs God’s Promise Camp.

Possibly I expected too much from “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”, based on the YA book by Emily M. Danforth, but, in any case, I can’t recommend it.

Before the film started there was a preview of a coming movie called “Boy Erased” about The son of a Baptist preacher who is forced to participate in a church-supported conversion starring Lucan Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Cherry Jones. I am hoping this is what I wanted “Miseducation” to be and wasn’t.

Movie trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toXBb638n2Y&list=PLRbeihAHPqvaHGoeJhwRgsEpxtAb9ThAN