'Outdoor School' (2025 Green Film Fest of San Francisco Selection Series, Part 3)
Dear Moviegoers,
For my first three movie reviews from the 2025 Green Film Festival of San Francisco, please visit part 1 here and American Dendrite here. To learn more about the event and its screenings, visit the official website:
Sometimes, it's a good thing for a movie to "quit while it's ahead," you know? This isn't to suggest reward before defeat or a consolation prize of some sort, but instead a wish for any given film about serious domestic issues to know what to push, when to push, and where to stop. Outdoor School is one of those givens, I'm afraid, despite its kind heart and justice-minded message.
Telling a somewhat autobiographical story about a black boy growing up in mid-1990s Portland, Oregon - specifically on that "other side" of the proverbial train tracks - Outdoor School suffers from, dare I write it, too much grace and humility. For any critic who misses good natures and better angels, a movie like this ought to have been delivered from on high. There are details, big and small, that are incredibly appreciated and don't go unnoticed, describing a level of treatment that was carefully held for the production.
Still, it's a difficult watch, as there are only so many long and repetitive scenes that any person can take without wanting to call it a night.
And still, Outdoor School represents a lot about how being bent towards justice can make a movie mean so much more about its character.
A mother. Her daughter and son. An immediate escape from an abusive situation. Nowhere to go and little money to keep going. For any city - especially Portland - and for a country like America, this is a severely serious predicament for anyone to be caught in, and for any community to be actively aggressive to. If Outdoor School does any one thing well, it's in the punishing treatment of this family from their neighborhood of jerks. Bosses, doctors, and school officials are all looking for their cut of the same symbolic pie - from cash to being their human punching bags - and they can only see other people as withholding from them. A failure of solidarity and stepping up for those in need, this is.
The young black boy, Melvin, goes on a weeklong school camping trip that acts as both a way for a mother to protect one of her kids and for a kid to come of age. Here, in nature - the kind that typically only those who can afford it can experience - Melvin is taken under this wing by the wonderfully supportive actor Jahi Di'Allo Winston, whom I had previously seen in the short-lived Netflix series (also set in the 1990s) Everything Sucks. For Outdoor School, his role doesn't "suck," since he exists as someone who leads by example and represents the future potential that Melvin could achieve. Potential for being a good man, and potential for being a fighter who uses mind over matter. Heart over fist.
Outdoor School can be exhaustive in more than one burst of sadness and tragedy, and it is overall brought down as a result. But its angle on righteous justice and action, as taught through some lessons from nature and lots from elders, can't be ignored. This isn't a warm film, but it's honest. This might be too tear-inducing, but it's not without reason. This shouldn't be as long as it feels, but its message is well worth its weight.
A movie can be both not-so-good and for-sure-fine, right?
Yes. 2.5/5
Stay tuned for part 4.