I guess it would be easy to come to the conclusion that the plot is "completely contrived" as you mention but, then, if that were a true concern 90% of all scripts would be thrown out on face. It would be like a movie being based on the premise that a woman, who after being involved in a car accident, convinces her attorney to hire her as a legal assistant even though she has no real experience. Once on the job, she is going through a case and, after looking at some medical records, finds evidence of wrong doing by company which made an entire community's residents sick and eventually convinces them to sue and brings this large company with endless resources to their knees and forces them to settle a case worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Kind of silly and contrived plot, isn't it? Oh wait, that's the plot of the movie Erin Brokovich and is based on a true story and it happened mostly that way. Ooops.
If I can suspend disbelief when I concede that Peter Parker was actually bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes Spider Man, then I can believe that, on a dare, an African American teenager breaks into the home of an elderly Caucasian writer and the two of them build a relationship based on a mutual gift of writing and forge a friendship based on their experiences. IF that is the sole basis for a plot being contrived then Harry would never had Met Sally, Superman would never have Returned and everybody in Seattle would be Sleeping just fine.
As far as Jamal's character being wooden and surly to a fault, I found his character to have more feeling and caring then what should be expected from a person with his experiences. He's a 16 year old African American boy who, in the past few years of his life, saw his father leave his mother after failing to keep his drug abuse in check, watch his brother leave the house, his mother struggle at being a single parent, be uprooted from his school and transplanted into completely sterile and strange environment - one that he obviously isn't most welcome in. After all this, the fact that he doesn't morph into a serial killer or Alien Predator is amazing. He show's amazing compassion to William at several times throughout the movie and, in the end, even though he pulls a real dick move in turning in the paper he worked on at Williams home, he still stayed true to his word and took the punishment for his actions instead of giving up his friend William. William repaid his kindness by reciting another one of the writings Jamal left in William's home.
I guess if you show a little compassion for what made Jamal's character the way he is, it's pretty easy to see the compassion in his actions.
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