Don't be mistaken by the title which makes it sound like someone dustily recounting the time they once got to spend with the young Mr Welles. Richard Linklater's latest offering is everything but this. Zac Efron may be the star who has all the girls running after him, but Christian Mckay as Orson Welles is the real star of this movie. He plays a character who thanks to Citizen Kane, we are all aware of and does this perfectly. This is a great case of a director casting an unknown, knowing that a name celebrity would be far too distracting. Within this movie we are truly transported into believing we are watching the Orson Welles. His appearance seems as if it were created for this role and the voice is flawless. We see a Welles who is young and full of arrogance, and he knows it. You are left never entirely sure what is a performance in his life. There are moments where he lets his emotions show, only ever in intimate settings. At the end you never truly know which of these moments were real, and which were simply creations of his mind to achieve his goal. The main focus is on a high school student, in the right place, at the right time, who finds himself drafted into a performance of Julius Ceasar. This young teenager played by Zac Efron, you cannot help but laugh when a young girl asks if he sings or if he has done any plays before. His response? A little, and just a few high school plays. Efron still has a lot to learn as a performer but this film gives him the chance to show his potential aside from his American Idol styled singing performance on the stage, which is exactly what you expect it would be.
An incredibly well crafted film with an Oscar worth performance of Welles. Hopefully his stature as an unknown will not cause him to be overlooked.
