a small-scale film with big emotional payoffs.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 16, 2007

The movie is both amusing and disturbing as it explores Emerson's lurching efforts to bond with his teacher.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2007

Toronto-based filmmaker Amnon Buchbinder tackles the sensitive subject of adolescent sexuality in this winning coming-of-age character study set in a wintry small town in Nova Scotia.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 4, 2007

These knots are all tied by the end, but not memorably so.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 4, 2007

This wry, tender 2005 Canadian comedy puts a fresh spin on the theme of adolescent sexual awakening.

| May 4, 2007

A gentle, perceptive Canadian film.

| May 4, 2007

Buchbinder displays an original filmic eye, but mostly Whole New Thing is a few drafts short of an emotionally fulfillilng feature.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 14, 2007

... promises slightly more than it delivers but still comes together nicely.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 9, 2007

But what's salutary about this effort is the canny intelligence and emotional understanding director Amnon Buchbinder has brought to the mostly well-wrought screenplay he wrote with MacIvor.

| Apr 9, 2007

The dialogue has a sour, sitcom ring that grows tiresome and irritating before the second reel.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Apr 7, 2007

With its narcissistic, not-as- sharp-as- he-thinks- he-is juvenile hero and weird approach to bridging the generation gap, Whole New Thing plays a lot like Wes Anderson's Rushmore, only sober instead of whimsical.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Apr 7, 2007

... well-intentioned but underwhelming ...

| Original Score: 3/6 | Apr 7, 2007

The cast is uniformly excellent, but Webber in his first feature role is a stand out, delivering a subtle performance that offers a fully realized portrayal of a smart, sensitive, confused, and sometimes bratty and obnoxious youth.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 6, 2007

If its portrait of hippie parents raising a misfit child has much in common with Rebecca Miller's Ballad of Jack and Rose, Whole New Thing refrains from going to the same extremes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 6, 2007

Buchbinder's direction creates a tremendous sense of location and adolescent awkwardness that blossoms beautifully during the picture.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 5, 2007

After a precisely crafted first hour with nary a detail out of place, Whole New Thing comes unglued toward the end, spiraling into melodrama without ever escaping its whiny, indie-rock soundtrack.

| Apr 4, 2007

Neither is it funny -- or poignant or insightful or remotely worth one's time except as a reminder that Canadian indies can be every bit as feeble as American ones.

Full Review | Apr 3, 2007

[The film] shows respect for open communications and differing life styles and lets the audience in on diverse feelings and ways of acting them out.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Apr 2, 2007

Thing suffers the familiar curse of Canadian seriocomedy -- just nice enough in content and stylistically like a telepic.

| Apr 2, 2007

Evinces an Ed Zwickian dramatic tenor that would probably scan better on ABC.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 25, 2007