When you watch Stand By Me, do you think to yourself, “This movie is good, but it would be great if it had Matthew McConaughey in it.” If you do, then Mud is the movie for you.

Okay, maybe I’m being too glib. Mud is neither a carbon copy nor a rip off of Stand By Me. But I am guessing that if like one one, you will also like the other. Tonally, they are very similar.

McConaughey plays the titular character in Mud, but he’s not the main character of the film.  That would be Ellis, a young teen who, along with his best friend, Neckbone, encounters Mud living in the boat they want to salvage from up in a tree. I’d like to pause here and say that Neckbone is the coolest name I’ve heard for a supporting character this year. Who names a kid Neckbone? It’s not his given name, that gets used a couple of time throughout the movie, so how on Earth does a kid pick up that nickname? I’m hoping for a Neckbone: Origins prequel in 2014.

Mud is a gritty movie. Not over the top gritty like Sin City, but gritty in a these are real people with real problems kind of way. People who have fallen out love, people who have fallen on the wrong side of the law, or in Mud’s case the wrong side of some very bad men; these are the people that inhabit the world of the film Mud. But like the character Mud, the the overall film Mud has a lot of heart.

One word of caution though, be careful what advice you take from Mud. As it turns out, a snake will cross a braided rope.

Mud is a serious contender for the best of 2013. Buy it now on Amazon.