Carly Schroeder

Set in a small Oregon town where secrets are hard to keep and lies even harder, Mean Creek flows with a simple elegance of truth and consequences as it follows a crisis in the lives of its teen characters, keenly directed by first-timer Jacob Aaron Estes. The journey within begins as a plot for playful payback on a local troublemaker; the journey on screen begins with a river, as a ragtag group of troubled-and-not teenagers set out on a boat trip to celebrate the birthday of their youngest member. As a sort of boyish Heart of Darkness trip develops, cracks in the crew form when some of the teens have second thoughts about what they are about to do. Photographed in mossy greens and bark-colored skies, Mean Creek exposes a strange natural growth that appears in the nuanced performances of a fantastic cast, almost as if audience and child are forced to grow up together. What is so fascinating is watching an instinct-driven morality play itself out, swirl in fits and starts, float along fo
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Length: 02:30
Posted: 7/23/2009

Fourteen year-old Alyssa (Schroeder) has been living with her grandmother Lucy (Ross) since the death of her mother a year ago. It s been a tough year for both of them and Lucy decides it s time for Alyssa to go to the Bahamas to live with Hawk (Dunbar), dedicated dolphin researcher and the father she never knew she had. Alyssa s arrival on the island comes at a decisively inconvenient time for Hawk, who is busy fighting greedy politicians and experts who are determined to turn his research center into a tacky tourist attraction. It s a prickly relationship between Hawk and Alyssa, but Tamika (Adams), Hawk s girlfriend, and Daniel (Harris), Tamika s father, smooth the way. Alyssa soon adjusts to island life and discovers the gift she shares with her father for communicating with dolphins, a skill which leads her into a powerful relationship with a wild dolphin which her father, for legitimate scientific reasons, cannot condone. But when the powers-that-be threaten to close down her f
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Posted: 10/27/2007

Independent filmmaker Jacob Aaron Estes makes his feature debut with the coming-of-age drama Mean Creek. Rory Culkin, Ryan Kelley, Scott Mechlowicz, Josh Peck, Trevor Morgan, and Carly Schroeder are teenagers living in small-town Oregon. Some of the boys take a boat trip for a birthday celebration. When they get an idea to play a mean trick on the town bully, it suddenly goes too far. Soon they're forced to deal with the unexpected consequences of their actions. Mean Creek was workshopped at the Eugene O'Neill Center's National Playwrights Conference and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival as part of the American Spectrum program. - Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
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Posted: 11/15/2007