Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley’s Sing Sing is an honest, explorational, open-hearted acting exercise film.

It’s intimate and earnest and straight-dealing and “affecting” if you’re inclined to go there, but for me it felt very, very boring. After an hour’s worth, I mean. I sat there and waited and waited and waited…

Because it’s just about a prison situation. Sing Sing’s Rehabilitation Through The Arts program, which is absolutely a good idea and a good thing, Lord knows. But there’s no story, no story tension, nothing to hold you, nothing that pulls you in. It’s just about watching guys act or try to act. Very good, straight-from-the-heart acting and hats off to Colman Domingo, but all you can do is sit there and be patient as you watch it and go “uh-huh.”

I made it to the end, and all I can say is “thank God I’m not doing time in Sing Sing prison.” Because this film certainly makes you feel as if you’re locked up, I can tell you. Thank God I have a certain amount of discipline and energy and a willingness to work hard and not give in to the usual vices and pitfalls, or else I might have become a criminal of some kind…who knows?

This is a very respectable MINOR FILM. I felt respect and a certain limited affection for the incarcerated characters, but thank God it ended when it did because I was starting to moan and groan a little bit.