God Grew Tired of Us

Opens at Uptown, Fri., Feb. 2. Rated PG. 88 minutes.

Having endured civil war, separation from their families, a thousand-mile trek through sub-Saharan Africa, and 10 years in a U.N. refugee camp while awaiting the myriad challenges of resettlement in the United States, the three “lost boys of Sudan” in this documentary can certainly withstand their sketchy portrayals in a borderline lazy but nonetheless compelling doc. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that God Grew Tired of Us, winner of two prizes at last year’s Sundance, is another Hollywood gloss on human tragedy. In the tradition of Schindler’s List, the doc finds its none-too-inconvenient truth in the miraculous exception to the rule. Millions have died in the Sudanese war; only half of the 27,000 boys who fled southern Sudan in 1983 reached refuge in Kenya, where a small number were selected to emigrate to the U.S. Of these, filmmaker Christopher Quinn chose three to follow—presumably on the basis of their potential to Make It. As a work of documentary storytelling, Quinn’s film has nothing on 2003’s vastly superior Lost Boys of Sudan, whose poetic approach to the assimilation of its subjects is far less pushy in the quest for fish-out-of-water pathos and a happy ending. ROB NELSON