Sweet Boy – Movie Review & Ending Explained

Nack is a teenage student at an all-boys private school. He is academically outstanding and gets excellent grades, only bested by his classmate Toy. Nack is slightly resentful of a Toy, whose wealthy family provides him with private tutoring lessons. In contrast, Nack comes from a single-parent family and doesn't want to ask his working mom to pay for a tutor.

Nack spends each day pretty ordinarily, minding his own business and trying to stay out of trouble. He hangs out with a small circle of friends, which includes Dook, Tey, and To. The four of them play video games, read manga, and do mundane teenage activities. His friends also discuss girls sometimes, although the romantically inexperienced Nack doesn't seem interested in this topic.

Unfortunately, Nack becomes a target of school bullying. The main perpetrator is Pong, a fiercely outspoken gay student. Enabled by his cliques of friends, he picks on Nack all the time. Although Nack denies being gay, Pong seems convinced that his classmate is closeted and has been hiding his sexuality.

Another classmate called Petch begins showing an interest in Nack. The two of them form a friendship over swimming lessons at school. These lessons start out as platonic. However, Nack becomes scandalized when he discovers a secret hookup place at the locker room by the pool. As Nack witnesses other students having sex, it awakens a desire in him that he never acknowledged until now.

My review of Sweet Boy is straightforward: avoid this movie at all costs. Please don't make the same mistake as I did and watch it out of curiosity. After seeing the name and poster, I wrongly assumed it would be a sweet lighthearted romance between swimmers. I couldn't be more wrong. I felt icky after completing Sweet Boy and almost didn't want to review it. However, I have a moral obligation to stop others from watching this ill-conceived movie.

Sweet Boy is a poorly crafted coming-of-age story that relishes harmful stereotypes, homophobic prejudice, and problematic tropes. It takes a wicked delight in putting the main character through senseless trauma and abuse. Serious topics like school bullying are handled recklessly, eager to sensationalize physical violence and psychological torment without diligence. The edgy drama doesn't succeed in being meaningful or provocative. Instead, each storyline feels insensitive and exploitative.

I hate how this movie portrays its gay characters. As the protagonist Nack discovers his sexuality, he doesn't go on a journey of self-empowerment. Instead, he's constantly belittled, provoked, and tortured. His love interests Petch and Toy have no backbones, the epitome of every weak-minded closeted guy out there. Pong is the worst out of the lot, a distorted caricature that depicts LGBT characters as catty, gossipy, and malicious. While I wouldn't label Sweet Boy as a homophobic movie, it perpetuates distasteful and ignorant gay archetypes.

Of course, Sweet Boy also has to contend with terrible writing that further amplifies its flaws. It suffers from predictable plots, clunky exposition, and one-dimensional characters. The unskilled storyteller is incapable of subtlety or complexity, relying on tired clichés and cheap thrills to sustain interest in the narrative. To be fair, a tiny portion of the movie feels genuinely watchable. The part where Nack engages in a sweet teenage romance is almost decent. Unfortunately, the pleasant vibe gets destroyed by obnoxious drama soon afterwards.

Sweet Boy parades many cast members in speedos, displaying titillating close-up shots of their wet poolside bodies. However, the camera ogles at their bulges so explicitly that the scenes feel crude, sleazy, and gratuitous. Plus, the lead actor Chimon is very young at sixteen years old, raising uncomfortable red flags around the highly sexualized exchanges. Sweet Boy could have told the same story far more tastefully, a sentiment that applies to every aspect of the movie.

In my reviews, I give middling scores to inoffensive BL stories that simply don't excite me. The failing grades are reserved for problematic projects that handle sensitive topics irresponsibly. Sweet Boy falls into the latter category. For an LGBT movie, I'm appalled by its perverse portrayals of gay teenage characters. I'm also disturbed by its toxic approach to mental health and violence. There are very few redeeming qualities to Sweet Boy, a tacky film that I wish to cleanse from my memory.