Angus

Here is the movie we’ve been waiting for: one where the fat smart kid wins over the girl and humiliates the football hero.

They claim that if you see enough movies, sooner or later you will watch your own life. Trust me, it was not “The Natural.”

“Angus” tells all those snotty high school golden boys, quarterbacks surrounded by packs of fawning friends, to stick it. At the end, as beautiful Melissa Lefevre walks home with Angus instead of loathsome Rick, she has learned one of life’s most important lessons: Choose someone just for his looks; being looked at may be the most interesting thing he does.

“Angus” stars Charlie Talbert as Angus Bethune, who is both the smartest and heaviest boy in his class. Science projects come easy; life is hard. His best friend is Troy (Chris Owen), the school geek whose ears resemble Dumbo’s. Angus has loved beautiful Melissa since grade school and dreams about her at night while she goes steady with Rick Sanford (James Van Der Beek), whom Angus has hated since grade school.

Rick knows how to find your soft spot and make fun of it. He thinks he’s perfect. He moves through life in lock-step with little future yes-men basking in his reflected glory. Both Angus and Rick are on the football team, but whenever Angus makes a brilliant tackle that forces a fumble, Rick picks up the ball, makes a touchdown and gets carried off on his teammates’ shoulders.

At least he’s got a lot of support at home from grandpa (George C. Scott), whose lesson for life is “Screw ‘me!,” and mother (Kathy Bates), a truck driver whose CB handle is “Bruiser.” They love him good big-boned boy proud granddad says he comes from “hearty stock.”

A joke changes Angus’ life. Rick fixes a Winter Dance election so that Angus and Melissa are elected King and Queen.

Angus is scared to go to the dance (“It’s not just that I can’t dance my limbs are lethal weapons”). And of course the only tuxedo at the rental shop that fits him is plum colored. But he goes.

Afterwards a cruel prank humiliates him. However, he comes through this trial successfully and in so doing wins a major battle for all obese children everywhere in what I can only describe as a “Rocky”-like climax. Charlie Talbert was well-cast as Angus because he wasn’t one of those “kind-of” fat kids you see in the King Size catalog who look about 12 pounds overweight. He is fat. But he is also intelligent, kind-hearted, strong-willed and charismatic.

He also has the ability to make light of his faults (“I don’t just sweat,” he tells Melissa. “I rain.”) In “Angus,” he goes up against one Hollywood’s most enduring biases. Fat people are always portrayed as losers or villains because Los Angeles idolizes physical beauty above everything else. I mean, think about it: how often do we see an overweight person playing anything other than comic relief?

And yet there are far more people who resemble Roseanne Barr than Demi Moore; not to mention those who bear closer resemblance to Forest Whitaker than Jean-Claude Van Damme so thank god for heroes like Angus Bethune!

Watch Angus For Free On Gomovies.