|
|
Never trust a movie with more than two intro sequences, it's a sign of desperation.
This movie has many of the elements of a good film, but can't decide how to assemble them. The supporting talent is excellent, but the leads are so so. Photography is competent and attractive, but would be more at home in a commercial or a music video than a coming of age comedy. Though out of place photography is just a symptom of the film's overall uneven tone.
At times a contemplative artistic study, at others a screwball comedy, the one tone keeps the other from sticking. The film's identity crisis at times makes it seem like it's 30% filler material. One completely out of place scene cuts from the standard narrative perspective to a fantasy sequence of a girl blowing up a truck and then back. Are we suddenly seeing, the protagonist, Joe's thoughts? Is that a part of this film's style now? Don't worry, it's the one and only time it'll ever happen.
And then there's dramatic investment. Should I have been worried when Joe was alone in the woods? When he's a 6 minute walk from a road and a Boston Market? Personally I didn't believe for a moment that these kids could have built that house, scavenged the materials, had the patience or skill to assemble it, or that they ever would have stayed in it for more than 2 nights. The premise, that they would live there for good, was never believable even for a moment; at most a month, or until it became uncomfortable. Where is the peril? Where is the risk?
It's very clear after the first thirty minutes that the film had completely run out of ideas. We see long sequences of pretty DSLR footage inter-cut with a couple days of the cast and crew messing around with an expensive slow motion camera. By the final sequence in the hospital I was begging this film to end. We had been four steps ahead of it since the second introductory sequence and by the third we had lapped it.
The movie is made watchable by Funny Or Die veterans Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally and Kumail Nanjiani, as well as by a show stealing performance by Moises Arias, though we never really know who his character is. He remains two-dimensional throughout, a sitcom style "breakout" character whose every action represents the writer directly asking the audience 'isn't this guy wacky?'.
Not to give anything away, but in the movie's finale the main character seems to claim that he knows about a certain subject, but then does all the worst things that he could possibly do while dealing with that subject. Ten minutes on Wikipedia could have shown the filmmakers what he should have done in the situation. It's sort of baffling, and adds to a particular tone that this film already dripped with; that is was made by entitled, insulated film students seeking artistic approval.
I wish them all luck in their future endeavors. I hope all of their next projects suit their personal styles a bit better.
score 5/10
FreakNumberOne 2 January 2014
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2934130/ |
|
29-11-2019 02:05:49
