College freshman Jones Dillon (Elijah Wood) drops out after an infuriating first day. As part of his inheritance from his grandfather, he had to attend the his old alma mater. He'd rather not move in with his hard-drinking mother Blanche (Elizabeth Perkins) and he has no memories of his long gone father. He moves out of his dorm room with its annoying roommate and moves into an old house which has been subdivided into apartments. Three of his neighbors are the volatile photographer Jane (Franka Potente),aspiring actress Lisa (Mandy Moore),and gun toting painter Brad. He writes violent fantasies from real life incidents and shoves them all into his luggage trunk.

This indie is directed by Jeffrey Porter. I don't think he's any good. He's trying to be quirky but at times, he's making it annoying. I'm fine with the annoying ska roommate. In a way, he's a bit funny but the couple in the car is way too annoying. Then there are the fantasies. They are guns and sex and very seventeen as in imagined by a seventeen year old boy. It's all a high school fantasy in this movie except Wood and Potente actually achieve some chemistry. Despite the amateurish touches, their romance gets to an interesting place and the movie is worth something.

There are some cute moments here and a talented group of actors giving their all to stretch those moments into something more. Working against that is a terribly contrived story and a director who overindulges in one of the worst modern movie clichés. The result is a film that's equal parts endearing and eye-rollingly frustrating. If I had to do a commentary track for All I Want, it would be nothing but alternating expressions of "Well, that was nice" and "Oh, come on!"

Jones Dillon (Elijah Wood) is a 17 year old college freshman who arrives on campus dragging a huge trunk behind him. After a few bad experiences on his first day, Jones drops out and uses his grandfather's money to rent a room in a boarding house. Once there, he's befriended by the wise gay guy who lives downstairs (Aaron Pearl) and bounces between the two women who live upstairs (Franka Portente and Mandy Moore),all the while having phone conversations with his mother in Texas (Elizabeth Perkins) that range from studied indifference to anger that she won't tell Jones the identity of his father.

This is a coming of age tale where Jones' experiences on his own transform him from aimless and silently needy virgin to…well, I'm not exactly sure what he's supposed to be at the end, other than no longer a virgin. Along the way, there are some interesting scenes watching Jones interact with Franka Portente's closed off and difficult break-up victim and Mandy Moore's self-centered and manipulative but more available aspiring actress. The script also has a neat undercurrent of the geographic and interpersonal realities of life in a boarding house. There's enough of that stuff sprinkled through the movie that I was never entirely ready to give up on it.

I came close, though, on several occasions. Jones is not a real person. He's a couple of well worn quirks and a general projection of passive cluelessness. That this 17 year with no job, no prospects, no ambition and nothing to offer would be like catnip to the two older women of the house was one of the first eye-rolling elements to All I Want. Jones' estrangement from his mother and yearning for his father feels prefabricated and inserted into the story, like a mobile home plopped into a vacant lot. Jones also has the recurring fantasies about beautiful women and at the end of the film, he shuts the door on that sort of daydreaming. The problem is that all of the fantasies but one are nothing but sight gags. They have no significance to anything else and the only meaning they could have is Oedipal, because he usually fantasizes about the women when he's on the phone with his mother. When and how he finally gives up these daydreams, however, doesn't really make sense in any oedipal fashion. It's like the fantasies where nothing but filler and then the filmmakers forgot that and thought this particular plot thread needed some resolution. It didn't.

The most irritating thing about this movie is director Jeffrey Porter's far too frequent use of a beyond tired storytelling trick. It's the one where there's a segue between scenes or a mini-montage supposed to indicate the emotions a character is going through and the soundtrack wells up with this pop or alt-rock song, depending on the genre of the movie. I'm not sure when this technique came into vogue but it was a long time ago. Like all clichés, it retains some of its original effectiveness so I can tolerate a filmmaker resorting to it once. Maybe twice. Porter does it repeatedly and it gets more annoying every time.

I liked Portente's and Moore's performances and putting them into a love triangle with a guy more believable and energetic than Jones Dillon would have produced a much better motion picture. As it is, All I want is never better than okay. You can do worse than watch this thing but you can also do better. It depends on how hard you're willing to look.

Simply put, this was a good movie. It wasn't over the top, it wasn't over stated, there wasn't anything major motion picture about this movie. It was an independent film for crying out loud. Basically it was a wonderfully simplistic movie.

When I first went to buy it, the store I was at told me they didn't have it in stock, but to rent it before buying it anyway because they heard it was bad. So I rented it, and to my amazement, I found myself giggling at the characters and feeling for them at the same time. I'm 28 years old, yet I could still picture how I felt at 17. I was able to connect with the movie, and it was able to keep my attention. (unlike certain "Blockbuster MUST SEE thrillers" that I pay $9.00 to fall asleep at)

this film had a lot of flaws, yes. But none of them really underscored the enjoyment I got from watching the movie. Elijah Wood did a wonderful job in his role as the doe eyed young adult wannabe. Mandy Moore did a great job as the seductive woman, although she didn't LOOK old enough to fit the part in my opinion. Franka Potente was OK as Jane, although I felt she lacked a bit of emotion and chemistry with Elijah. I think she and Mandy Moore would have been better suited to switching roles. I think Mandy would have been a better Jane and Franka a better Lisa. Just my opinion.

One actor who I think will be a great star one day is Aaron Pearl (cowboy Brad) The only actor who shined in the scifi movie "Bloodsuckers", and is known to Stargate SG-1 fans as young General Hammond. That guy has some good talent. He just needs some bigger parts. (No I'm not a relative. I honestly think he's got some great talent. And he's pretty cute. Minus the handle bar mustache.) So Simple, sweet, not perfect, but not as bad as some people have been reviewing it. Definitely up there as one of my favorite movies.