| The Adventures of Sebastian Cole | |
| Director: | Tod Williams |
| Producer: | Karen Barber Jasmine Kosovic |
| Music: | Elizabeth Swados |
| Cinematography: | John Foster |
| Editing: | Alfonso Gonçalves |
| Studio: | Culpan Productions LLC |
| Distributor: | Paramount Classics |
| Runtime: | 96 minutes[1] |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $100,841 |
The Adventures of Sebastian Cole is a 1998 American comedy drama film written and directed by Tod Williams and starring Adrian Grenier as the title character.
In June 1983 in Dutchess County, New York, Sebastian Cole's stepmother, who formerly went by Hank and presented as male, outs herself and announces that she is having a sex change operation. Sebastian's sister, Jessica, leaves immediately for California, and his mother, Joan, takes him back to England. Eight months later, Sebastian is back in the United States, knocking on his stepmother's door. Now named Henrietta, she takes Sebastian in and supports him over the next few months of high school. Sebastian's "adventures" are mostly self-destructive.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 46% based on reviews from 24 critics, with an average rating of 5.8/10.
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, noting that the film avoids easy cliche in favour of a more thoughtful approach to the subject matter. He gave particular praise to Clark Gregg saying that, whilst one is never in doubt about his gender because of his physical appearance, "in his heart he knows he is a woman, and he is true to that inner conviction with a courage that the film doesn't need to underline, because it permeates the performance".[2] Stephen Holden of The New York Times praised Adrian Greiner's performance feeling that it "beautifully captures his character's precarious balance of naivete and bravado, self-destructiveness and self-invention".[3]
Writing in Variety, Joe Leydon believed that the scenes between Gregg and Grenier were the strongest (although he felt that Gregg's portrayal came close to caricature). He was critical of the technical aspects of the film's production, felt that other films had covered similar ground better and that the ending was poorly conceived and too abrupt. He predicted that the film would perform poorly with critics and at the box office.[4] Entertainment Weeklys Owen Gleiberman gave the film a "B" rating, adding that he wished it had been better structured, although the current configuration was "integral" to its "charm".[5]