On the evening of our 38th wedding anniversary, Frosty and I saw THE DEBUT at the Aurora Asian Film Festival. It's a low-budget independent film about a Filipino-American family with a rebellious teenage son who is torn between the old culture of his parents and the new culture of his high school friends.

Unfortunately, the director bent over backwards trying to give THE DEBUT a slick Hollywood feel and only succeeded in making it seem even more amateurish than it actually is, with its heavily message-laden script, its soundtrack featuring crackly dialogue and deafening bursts of music, its acting that ranges from bad to mediocre, and its so-so inematography and editing. But he does succeed in giving bozos like me an authentic introduction to some interesting aspects of Filipino-American culture, and he is so genuinely earnest and sincere in the messages he conveys that for all its clumsiness I couldn't help but find THE DEBUT an endearing film.

My rating on the Watson scale: 2