My Life, Made Possible By Pop Culture

I recently read an article hypothesizing that independent film was dead, and after working on one such set this past weekend, I can’t help but disagree… but I must not how different today’s indies are compared to even just a year or two ago. Independent film allows an artist room to grow, which is why so many gravitate towards that medium. If you’re passionate about your craft, you usually don’t want to spend years working your way up through a system that ultimately may never reward you, and you certainly don’t want to get stuck working with material that is not what you love. But where it gives, independent film is also known to take away: without the financial and reputation cushions of a well known studio or production company, a filmmaker can’t literally turn their imagination into reality, as they are often restricted by budget and time.

By a studio’s definition, an independent film is primarily funded by one person or institution. However, that means the actual budget of the project can be anything from SAG Ultra Low Budget (under two hundred thousand dollars) to IA Tier Three, which is just under ten million dollars. With such a discrepancy in numbers, the gap in production value is just bound to be as wide; it doesn’t matter how talented someone is or how many favors one can pull, there are just certain things that can’t be done with only a few thousand, especially when compared to those that had triple the money.

But the common audience member doesn’t think of such things; the common audience member doesn’t even see budgetary figures. So what is an independent film to them, then? Is it still something that doesn’t feature big name stars? Well, perhaps, depending on what one considers is a “big star,” but Juno features the exceptionally recognizable Jason Bateman, Allison Janney, and J.K. Simmons, not to mention Jennifer Garner. So, is it something that features a ton of monologues, dialogues, banters, and virtually no action? Sometimes, especially on the ones with severe budget constraints, but even that is not an all or nothing formula: Contour is a low budget martial arts flick, Broken is a guerilla horror/suspense flick, and That is a straight-to-DVD snowboarding flick. Really what independent film has always meant to me is that you’re just free from a studio’s control: you can tell the story you want to tell and in the way you want to tell it. Sometimes this means hiring specific actors that maybe you see a lot of potential in but who, for one reason or another, would only get typecast and/or Under Five roles in bigger projects. Sometimes this means telling a story outside its “typical” genre structure and not being forced to open the first five minutes with some big and flashy just to hook the audience. Sometimes this means being a hybrid filmmaker (Writer/Producer, Producer/Director, Director/Writer, or many more permutations…), but all of it means (IMHO) that for once the film is really yours because you don’t have a studio head breathing down your neck and controlling the important creative decisions about which they usually know nothing anyway.

Independent films are no easy feats: with less money to play with and without the cushion of having a studio attached, often times shots must be sacrificed and scenes rewritten to work around the locations you actually get versus the ones you have on a wish list. Same goes for talent on occasion, though after the surge of independent films sweeping major awards shows, perhaps starting with 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, many more A and B list stars are reading (and loving, I might add) those “small” scripts. Well, small in budget, but big in substance: after all, some of those offer the meatiest character work some of these actors will ever get offered, and you can’t argue with that!

There is rarely distribution in place before production begins on independent films, though, so there is often a post-production limbo that can go on for years before anything happens with the project. Things like product integration, advertising, and marketing often falls on the shoulders of the producers, no small jobs that undoubtedly the people aren’t used to doing; in the studio system there are whole departments dedicated solely to each of those things. At least in the beginning, when the film is just in the can, you are your own publicist with independent films– taking them to festivals, hosting private screenings, trying to get write ups in the trades. You have to sell yourself and your work to not only get someone to buy the completed work but to also hopefully give you money for the next one. And sometimes that’s the hardest thing of them all for artists to do.

The first five minutes of Vantage Point start off strong and with a bang (no pun intended), as Sigourney Weaver and a crew of news producers sit inside a control room, ready to go live with reporters on the scene of a high-profile presidential appearance in Spain. As Weaver gets into a petty squabble with one reporter (Zoe Saldana) over the tone she chose to take in a live shot, a gunshot fires, hitting the president, and the crew scrambles to cover it. The pacing picks up significantly, as it begins to match the panic-mode of the people in the square, and then comes the one-two punch of an explosion at the base of the hotel in the center of the events. Travis chooses to introduce these events– the ones that supposedly set up the course for the whole film– to his audience through the limited angles this crew’s cameras are able to capture, and in doing so, he doesn’t allow us access to all of the information just yet. The give a little, hold a lot back approach of Vantage Point shows great potential, but unfortunately it gets old quickly and just ends up frustrating the viewers.

It’s painfully obvious what is really going on from the first few minutes of Vantage Point– in part because the majority of the plot is covered neatly in the promotional trailers but also due to the fact that the script is just not imaginative, and the plot is quite thin overall– meaning, the stereotypical bad guys are the bad guys; there are no twists here.  Barry Levy, a former teacher who sold Vantage Point as his first screenplay, sets up a few points (such as the fact that the president used a double for his appearance and therefore didn’t actually get shot) that– if the film was allowed to play out past the course of the same two violent events over and over and over– would actually offer interesting and unique commentary. It would have been great to see the ramifications after the realization that the public had been duped; it would have been something rooted in reality and just tongue-in-cheek enough to elicit smiles. Instead, Levy’s sophomoric style keeps the audience five steps ahead of the movie at any given moment, eliminating any real reason to keep watching.

The film is full of filler, offering the same sequences from varying angles and POVs– from Secret Service agents (Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox) to a civilian with a video camera (Forest Whitaker) who just happens to be in the right place at the right time to capture the “truth”  to an up-and-coming terrorist (Said Taghmaoui, who is really too good for that kind of typecasting).  Between the repetition, the slo-mo, the rewind sequences in between POVs, and the ungodly amount of running, there is no real plot– just a whole lot of fast motion. The script must have been only twenty pages long and therefore would have made a really clever, really innovative short… or even a web series.
Vantage Point boasts a huge cast of name talent, none of whom Travis seemed to know what to do with.  Only Quaid and Whitaker have backstories, as simple as they may be, because Travis instead chooses to focus on convoluted action, muddying the importance of his wide net of supporting players and making the majority of them much more expendable than they perhaps should be.  There is really nothing at stake for any of them other than “stay alive,” and the few attempts at character connection or dimension– most of which are given to Whitaker– are too on the nose, as if Levy doesn’t trust his audiences enough to read facial expressions, and Travis doesn’t trust his actors to give the right ones. Levy tells when he should show; when Whitaker is alone, he mutters to himself ridiculously, unrealistically, and expositionally. There are actual, audible “Oh my Gods” spilling from these wide-eyed characters’ mouths, and suddenly six-foot-tall, hulking men are reduced to melodramatic seventh grade girls.  It’s fitting, really, that in a film about deception, corruption, and violence, the filmmakers themselves proved to be similarly paranoid control freaks, unable to allow their actors just to do their own thing.
Far too much is by “chance” in this film, again namely with Forest Whittaker, who is the only civilian featured, and who happens to stumble onto just about everything. Dennis Quaid, too, though, just happens to have luck and timing on his side, finding pieces of the puzzle literally one after the other just dropped at his side, which is really just typical of the arc a once-fallen hero desperate to redeem himself takes in films like Vantage Point.  Everything just comes too “easily.”  Travis is far too distracted by manufacturing suspense to focus on the huge holes and just expects his audience to be willing to suspend their disbelief enough to join him on this “convenient” journey.

What could possibly be left to say about Vantage Point, then, in a two-disc special edition?  Well first off, you are given three versions of the film: the widescreen, full screen, and a digital copy to burn onto your hard drive or tote around with you on a PSP.  Special features include a featurette called “An Inside Perspective,” which is really nothing more than hype interviews from the cast and crew, which is the most interesting thing on the disc, including the feature; “Plotting an Assassination,” which is a semi-in-depth head-scratcher of an interview with Levy; one deleted scene; and an audio commentary with Travis, in which he attempts to give his choices merit.  Like the majority of the film itself, these are superfluous.

Vantage Point’s concept is clever, and its effort is certainly admirable, but it was just too big for these green filmmakers, and unfortunately they got caught up in the flashy style and eliminated all substance.  The result, which is just laughable when it isn’t intended to be a comedy, would have been much more successful if it was half its length– and at only ninety minutes, that’s certainly saying something.

“Back in the day” when a gun battle or a car chase came on screen in the theater, the goosebumps the audiences members got were because the things they were seeing unfold in two-dimensional form in front of them made them want to get up and experience life.  Stunts have a way of fueling even the most passive movie goer’s adrenaline, testing their theories about what we are capable above and making them want to take some risks all of their own.  Though special effects, in one archaic form or another, have been around as long as cameras themselves– in 1895, the first documented case of stop-motion photography (then simply known as “trick” photography) was created by Alfred Clark when he had his actors freeze in place, stopped the camera, and switched out his actress with a dummy while reenacting the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots– they were not used with such liberalism until recently.  In fact, CGI, the technology that makes effects quicker and easier than ever before, was not introduced until 1976, and even then it’s technology was quite unsophisticated.  Still, filmmakers were excited by the prospects, and slowly but surely, they began incorporating its elements into action films, horror films, period pieces, and lately even straight dramas or comedies: the next time you’re watching something that takes place in an arena or sports stadium, think about how many of those bodies you see in seats are real and how many are bots.  At first it seemed like it would blow over: everyone was just excited by the technology and what it could do, and they used it with a heavy hand, but certainly the honeymoon phase would fade away… right?  Sadly no, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  In an ever-escalating effort to keep raising the shock factor bar, more and more action films rely on CGI enhancement to create larger-than-life moments but unfortunately just end up falling into the traps of the technology and gives us something akin to an overblown videogame: just a bit too loose at the hinges to be mistaken for anything that could pass as reality.

In-camera special effects, such as stop motion technology or stunts allow filmmakers to get creative with their storytelling but to do so in a way that still lives in reality.  There is an element that keeps the scenes grounded in reality: everything we watch unfold before us is something that a real person actually did.  Not only does that give us a surge of power about what our limitations are, but it adds credibility to the work of fiction.  CGI most certainly allows filmmakers to get creative in other ways; their horizons are expanded and roadblocks to ideas are virtually torn down, but there’s a thin line with what’s complementary and what’s just too much.

Let’s take today’s release, Wanted, as an example. The Fight Club meets Smokin’ Aces on meth high-octane shooter flick boasts a protagonist whose sped-up heart rate actually allows him to slow down and focus on details of chaos in front of him, grabbing a metal ball from inside a piece of clenching machinery, racing atop a moving train, and curving a bullet.  But let’s back up a minute: one of the first scenes in the film is an assassination on a Fraternity member who supposedly went rogue: standing in a high-rise office, a laser beam cuts through the windowpane, hitting his female companion in the middle of her forehead and sending her blood, as red as the laser light itself, splattering onto the wall behind her.  From there the man takes off, running for the elevator, assumedly fleeing to safety.  Instead, he breathes deeply, crouches down, and everything in his vision begins to pulse.  He presses his foot against the back of the elevator, and the wall crumples like he’s turning into the Incredible Hulk.  He runs at down the hall, sending papers flying in his path, and plunges through the window, shooting at men on a rooftop across the way.  Then, in a move over which Jerry Bruckheimer will probably sue, we see a bullet push through a man’s forehead, as he gets shot from behind, and then everything reverses, and we follows the bullets path, sucking out of his skull and spinning back through the air into the barrel of a gun.  Cool?  Sure.  Additional quality?  Not at all.  If anything, it was a cheap tactic to show off what they figured out their Macs could do.

The first time the young protagonist in Wanted is introduced to his destiny it is during a similar shootout, which once again focuses on the trajectory of the bullets rather than the dance the shooters have to do to in their chase. He, too, flees the scene and ends up in the center of a parking lot, with a delivery truck barreling down on him. His savior comes in the form of Angelina Jolie who whips a cherry red Viper around and manages to scoop him inside without even stopping. She can curve cars and bullets; she must be the master. While that shot had the audible “how’d they do that?” gasp going for it, what follows is a computer generated inspired mess of a chase that is incomparable in its frenetic nature, as well in the number of cars she purposefully drives into or against. Stunts like these used to be about artistry: about perfecting the use of an instrument (be it a prop gun, a car, or even just their own bodies) to the point where they would bring it to the edge (get inches from another car, for example), but at the last second they would always regain control with a simple smirk and flick of the wrist. Stunts are about grace and creativity and testing boundaries, but computers are just about formulas and equations and the easiest way possible to make something louder, faster, and more over the top.  Stunts get you on the edge of your seat; though you know the players involved will survive, you still want to see how far they push themselves.  CGI removes that risk and therefore a lot of the suspense, and to compensate, the result is often much glossier and flashier than it need be, provoking eyerolls and chuckles of disbelief. A dangling Amtrak train off a bridge that ultimately splits apart and plummets down a cliff to water below; a young hero blowing away his enemies one by one with muzzle flashes and mini-bombs? CGI can (and did) do that, but there’s no choreography there; there’s no interaction between a director, his actors, his stunt doubles– his trained professionals. There’s only a guy sitting behind a computer screen, creating a cartoonish, isolating world, and while CGI hasn’t completely eliminated the need for actual people in films just yet, I’m sure (especially with all these talks of strikes) producers would love to work out a way for that to happen.  And suddenly, Toto, we’re not in filmmaking anymore; suddenly we’re just computer programmers projecting our projects onto a big screen.

As a smart and creative kid from a troubled family, Anton Yelchin’s role as the title character in Charlie Bartlett can’t help but recall his in last year’s quirky comedy Running With Scissors.  Yelchin wears the same earnest grin and puppy dog wide eyes to play the harmless, innocent little boy who holds the true value of his intelligence and therefore his threatening nature as a deep secret.  The depth of his performance offers a duality to Charlie: is he just a precocious kid or a devious schemer with much greater plans, managing to dupe us all?  Charlie Bartlett plays with the idea of perception versus reality in an increasingly paranoid society, and unfortunately the result is just as muddied and messy as a “brain on drugs,” for lack of better terminology.

In a quest for friendship and acceptance at his new high school, Charlie uses his cunning to convince doctors to right prescriptions for psychiatric drugs that he then sells to his classmates.  An innate entrepreneur, Charlie is able to hone his skills due to his dippy and indulgent mother (Hope Davis)’s quest to just be the boy’s friend.  She shelters him with limos and private schools and “the estate” but keeps her emotional distance, undoubtedly hurt by his father’s past actions and afraid to get too close to another of the gender, even if he is her own son.  The only other parental figure in the film is the school’s principal (Robert Downey Jr.) and father of Charlie’s crush (Kat Demmings).  As an alcoholic-workaholic, he is the stereotypical overprotective father, checking up on the boy he sees as a threat to his daughter’s purity without considering her role in the relationship.  It’s a sobering look at Downey Jr., who is hardened and jaded in the way he always is, but in playing a father and a role model, it just takes him to another level.

Director Jon Poll picked an incomparable cast, but without them, Charlie Bartlett would never have gotten a wide release.  Its look at the effects and use of prescription medication is hardly revolutionary; there is no strong message for or against the way they are handed out like candy in society or even in this film.  Events take place one after the other in a surreally heightened timeline, stripping the story of its believability and truth.  The same is said for the conclusions characters draw and the consequences (or lack thereof) they suffer for their actions; there are ups and downs within every ten minutes, making it feel like the film itself should be on some sort of mood stabilizer.  Perhaps these were conscious choices on Poll’s part, but with the manic feel of Charlie Bartlett in tone, material, and editing, it’s doubtful.  Poll just tries to do too much, and unfortunately his actors get swallowed up in it all.

Charlie Bartlett on DVD offers three blasé commentary tracks from Poll, which is just as narcissistic as Charlie himself, opening the film by standing on a stage, listening to hundreds of his peers chant his name.  Considering Poll just seems to have gotten lucky with some of his choices and on the whole seemed to be flying by the seat of his pants with “this whole directing thing,” one commentary can be considered stretching his knowledge and insight, but three is just downright ridiculous.  They could have easily been condensed into one, and the result still would have been underwhelming.  If anything, it would have been nice to hear from the film’s saving graces instead of behind-the-scenes players whose approaches were questionable.

“The Restroom Confessional” is a clip that, at two minutes, can’t really be called a featurette, featuring the cast and crew of Charlie Bartlett sitting in Charlie’s infamous “office,” venting their frustrations.  It’s cute but forgettable and would only add something to the disc if it were funnier.

Everyone in Charlie’s world is fit for psychiatric evaluation, and the writing delivers them in a flat, obvious, expositional way, that distracts from the rich and detailed individual performances.  Charlie Bartlett preaches a message from an adolescent boy’s mouth, and unfortunately it just makes Poll and his film seem that much more sophomoric.  As a child who just wants to be liked and who is trying to hard to be a man, he is an odd choice to be “the professional,” but he, and the film in general, is desperate to prove that sometimes all one needs to initiate change is a genuinely sympathetic ear.

We all coo over just how precious and cute the animals are that we see in our favorite movies or television shows.  How many of us grew up begging our parents for dogs just like Lassie or Comet from Full House?  But how often do we stop to think about those working dogs behind the on-screen persona and what they go through to bring us an hour or two of enjoyment?

Le Paws Agency, one of the leading in animal talent and as featured on such shows as MTV’s Rob & Big, prides themselves on the discipline of their talent, but in reality, the dogs and cats are simply kept in crates—small, cramped, metal boxes—until the moment action is called.  The dogs and cats spend their days in the solitude of their trainer’s van or in a distant corner of the set, aware of all of the people inside but not allowed to play or even get petted.  At times, like on the set of I Am Legend, it is so the animal doesn’t bond with anyone but its scene partner, but more often than not, it is just to keep them from being underfoot and distracting crewmembers.

The animals are brought onto set to perform their tricks promptly and adequately, and then they are ushered just as quickly back into their crates.  Sure, they’ll get a piece of a treat or cookie when they nail their mark, but the stern “good job” is far from the love and affection an owner would show them at home.  They are treated more like walking, barking props than animals with feelings.

Sure, animals are sometimes needed in films just to represent life.  How weird would it be to show a park and not show someone walking a dog, or set a scene on a farm and not see pigs or chickens wandering about?  And yes, even though CGI has come along way in creating realistic animals, they are still just a bit robotic and creepy—not unlike those Webkinz that are fast replacing real first pets in many child-filled households.  However, working animals tend to have a shorter lifespan than the average dog or cat or horse or monkey.  Part of this must be due to the stress of having to perform and not really understanding why it’s so important they have to walk to a specific place or jump at a specific time.  And the harder the trick, the more stress it must cause.  Animals are just like people: sometimes they don’t feel like doing something, but when you have an animal on-set, getting paid to do something specific, stubbornness or refusal is not taken for an answer. And once the animal realizes no one is fooling around, they very quickly lose their happy-go-lucky “I just want to play” attitude; they even often stop wagging their tails.  Their new serious demeanor ages them by taking much of the fun out of their lives.

Part of a working animal’s shortened lifespan probably also comes from their environment, which can in no way be called “normal.”  Just like how child actors grow up fast, so do working animals age quicker.  And for a dog, for example, where one year really equals seven, one year maintaining the rigorous and erratic schedule of film production must feel like fifteen.  The trainers and handlers on-set are supposed to be there to protect the working animals’ best interest, but how do we know they wont ignore signs of fatigue when the idea of overtime causes their eyes to turn into dollar signs?

While some of the tricks we see animals perform definitely inspire the “how’d they get them to do that?” audible gasp, more times than not, an animal is in a scene merely to tug at the audience’s heartstrings.  Anytime an animal is in a horror movie, for example, like the tiny Maltese in Urban Legend, it is clear it is not going to end well for the animal (fake as it may be), and it is merely a cheap ploy to get the audience more emotionally invested.  Let’s force the filmmakers to use their creative muscles a little bit more and stop taking the animals so for granted.

Definitely, Maybe
Universal; 2008
Directed By Adam Brooks

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Adam Brooks’ Definitely, Maybe starring Ryan Reynolds is the kind of fairytale that could only possibly work in today’s post-millenium, cynical times.  Will Hayes (Reynolds) is sweet, slightly overly dramatic speech writer and divorced dad to Maya (Abigail Breslin).  The film opens with his voice over, right away setting up that this is not your typical romantic comedy.  After picking up his daughter from school and learning her class got a lesson in sexual education that day, Maya is hell bent to find out how her father came to fall in love with her mother, a topic all the more heated now that they are no longer together.  Will starts his story way back in the early nineties, preparing his daughter to hear about the three women he had serious relationships with and leaving it up to her to figure out which one is her mother.  Though it is painfully obvious which woman is in fact Maya’s mother from the very first moment after we’ve met all three, Definitely, Maybe is just as sweet (if at times just as slightly overly dramatic) as its protagonist, offering reminiscence of some simpler times to cushion the harsh blow of the ever-changing world around both father and daughter.

Definitely, Maybe is in many ways a love letter: first to the women Will has left (or who left Will) but also to the city that surrounds him, New York.  Brooks, along with his Cinematographer, Florian Ballhaus, are fond of long tracking shots of the characters moving through the city streets, lingering on the architecture, foliage, and background players to exhibit that it is all important to this man’s story.  The city is as much involved as any of the women; in fact, the city could be considered Will’s fourth love.  It is the kind of New York that only exists in movies, from the pleasing fall color palette to how he manages to cross paths time and again with the same people, giving it an almost magical, ethereal quality and undoubtedly being used as a device to further drive home Brooks’ modern-day fairytale imagery.

Unfortunately, much of the dialogue does feel contrived, and the only reason it is saved is due to the phenomenal casting.  Elizabeth Banks, as Emily, Will’s college girlfriend, perhaps has the worst of it, but her down-to-Earth and sunny demeanor deliver the words at times a bit sheepish but never cartoonish.  Rachel Weisz as Summer, the free spirited, precocious writer, makes herself a bit more mysterious and in turn creates another dimension to her character just through subtle eyework and body language while interacting with Reynolds.  Isla Fisher as April, the somewhat flakey but always hopeful doe-eyed ingénue, easily flits back and forth between serious and goofy, warming the audience to her immediately.  Since the just-under-two-hour course of Definitely, Maybe must include the arc of three relationships, some are better developed than others, which only makes it all the easier to determine just exactly how the story will end.  Ironically, though the audience is often one step ahead of Will (and therefore one step ahead of the film itself), there is never a dull moment; anticipation runs high as you find yourself easily caught up in this messy world, rooting for the young man to finally come to his senses both in the past and the present.

Since the story is mostly Will’s, Reynolds is really given a chance to shine as a leading man, for the first time in a non-genre feature film.  He eagerly accepts the challenge and gives every scene his all, making his performance the biggest joy to watch of them all. And his love life was just so complicated that it takes the majority of the film to explain, unfortunately relegating Breslin to a supporting player. She doesn’t get to offer much more than some spunky retorts and overly enthusiastic voiceover.  The few scenes she shares with Reynolds, she of course steals, though for the most part, those are moments already seen just by viewing the trailer.  What is nice, though, is how she does manage to pop up right before you’ve completely forgotten she is the reason for this diatribe, which leaves the impression that throughout everything, she is always on her father’s mind, and if nothing else, that is a sweet sentiment with which to be left.

For some reason, watching Definitely, Maybe in anamorphic widescreen on the DVD make the images look compressed, as if the original was just over 2.35:1 and therefore had to be refigured for at-home systems.  The result is not completely distracting, but to a trained eye, it is noticeable.  However, the rest of the DVD offers features great enough to make up for any visual quality shortcomings: the audio commentary with Brooks and Reynolds sounds like two buddies hanging out and having a good time, which is welcoming, though not necessarily insightful.  Of course there are the obligatory deleted scenes, as well as two featurettes: “Creating a Romance,” and “The Changing Times of Definitely, Maybe,” both of which are exactly what they sound like.  “Creating a Romance” is a behind-the-scenes look at the storytelling devices used to set apart Will’s three relationships.  Through interviews, the audience is given a little back story on each character, explaining just how she is different from the next.  In “The Changing Times of Definitely, Maybe,” we are taken behind-the-scenes of the production design and given a crash course in how they transformed Will’s world through the decades.  This is a chuckle-worthy piece, mostly because of the nostalgia it invokes, especially when considering the music choices within the film.

A gag reel would have been a nice inclusion as well, but regardless, at-home audiences should not take an indecisive cue from Definitely, Maybe’s title and debate with themselves over whether or not to pick this one up on DVD; the verdict should definitely lean toward the former.

Though spring may have barely sprung in some parts of the country, schoolchildren everywhere already have the summer sun in their sight-line, ready to toss aside their textbooks and dioramas and Number 2 pencils for the dewy grass and sparkling lakes that only a summer camp can provide.  Haven’t already picked the one that’s right for you yet or just want to get a jump start on the seasonal spirit?  Check these out:

Judd Apatow’s first foray into film was with the 1995 childhood classic Heavyweights, so it should be no surprise that has taken the “Best Film About Fat Camp” ribbon.  Starring such comedic gems as Ben Stiller, Tim Blake Nelson, Allen Covert, and a young Kenan Thompson, Heavyweights centered on a group of overweight kids who get shipped off every summer by their fitness-crazed parents only to learn that this year the camp has been purchased by a weight loss entrepreneur who wants to use the camp as his own personal infomercial.  Chaos– along with some binge eating, junk food fighting, and makeshift obstacle courses– of course, ensues.

For those of you who were theatre nerds, Todd Graff’s 2003 film festival hit Camp takes the “Best Drama (Camp)” ribbon and might just prove to be the right fit.  Following a few teenage actor/singer/dancer hybrids through a summer of showcases, audiences are given a glimpse at the fickleness, and yes, even the friendship that comes out of such intense training and such close quarters.

Sometimes camp activities seem kind of lackluster; for the hours of fun lanyards never failed to provide, they were really just sharp cords of plastic.  That doesn’t mean the counselors didn’t mean well, but perhaps—like in this next case—they were just too distracted with their personal lives to realize the free-for-all their organization had become.  1995’s The Babysitters Club featured a Before They Were Stars cornucopia (Rachel Leigh Cook, Bre Blair, Marla Sokoloff, Kyla Pratt, Scarlett Pomers, and even Schuyler Fisk) of characters who all had a million things going on besides the day camp they ran out of their backyard.  Claudia had to pass her summer science course; Stacy fell for a much older boy; Dawn had to appease her next-door neighbor and fend off the geeky kid; and Kristy’s dad came back to town—a secret she tried to keep from her close friends and ended up bringing down the whole camp.

Though it received mostly negative reviews from critics who “just don’t understand” back during its 2001 release, Wet Hot American Summer has become the perfect cult comedy classic for those who really are “Too Old To Be At Camp and Just Want To Sleep Around.”  Set in the early eighties and compiled of improv comics like Janeane Garafalo, Molly Shannon, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, and members of The State, Wet Hot American Summer is a very specific kind of humor (read: lots of non-sequiturs) centered on one very specific, and very assumed-to-be-universal problem: getting the girl before camp comes to an end.

Along similar lines is the Kristy Nichols/Tatum O’Neal cult classic Little Darlings about two friends who make a pact to lose their virginity during their time at camp.  Just chaste enough (and just preachy enough in parts) for the 1980 censors, it’s a film that is nostalgic for adults but even suitable for tweens today.  1993’s Indian Summer, on the other hand, is one for the older audience, as thirty-something ex-campers reunite on the grounds at which they first met over a dozen years earlier.  They reminisce, romance, and reassess the route their lives have taken.

1961’s The Parent Trap and 1995’s “update” It Takes Two are quintessential “Best Camp Gone Wrong” moments with both movies featuring a group of counselors and other administrative personnel who don’t seem to realize they have mixed up their campers.  However the award for “Camp Gone Severely Wrong” has to go to The Burning (1981; a group of pranksters decides to target the creepy caretaker, only he is back at camp to wreak his own havoc) and its seeming-update Camp Slaughter (2005; stranded motorists stumble across a camp cursed to relive the same 1981 day over and over).  The latter are only good in the so-bad-they-have-their-moments way and are not to be viewed by the squeamish, impressionable, or purveyors of taste, I might add.

Finally, for those of you who never felt you fit into one “specialty” camp or another or just longed to break free of parents and responsibility for the whole summer, Camp Nowhere is the absolute end-all-be-all must of this list.  Starring Christopher Lloyd, Jonathan Jackson, Andrew Keegan, and Marnette (then Marnie) Patterson, it was a hit amongst the tween crowd in its 1994 release but has withstood the test of time as future generations, too, dream of conning their parents out of a couple thousand dollars and escaping to a lakefront cabin to host bonfires, play with fireworks, and engage in mud-wrestling competitions and pie-eating contests.  Camp Nowhere is a tale about the strong friendships formed during a summer away, if nothing else, as kids from all social cliques mingled together and worked toward the one common goal of outsmarting their parents (and government authorities) by showing off four fake camps, back-to-back, in a movie climax that made countless adults jealous of the level of potential those kids inherently possessed.

Be Kind Rewind
New Line; 2008
Directed By Michel Gondry

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If you thought the pairing of Jack Black and Mos Def in Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind was going to be the equivalent of a cinematic Odd Couple, you wouldn’t be completely wrong. Black is back at his usual silly antics as Jerry, a slightly paranoid oddball who frequents the video rental store at which Mos Def’s Mike works. And Mos Def himself works well as the straight man, a quiet thinker who only wants to get his work done in a way that makes his boss, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), proud. When Fletcher has to leave town for a few days and leaves Mike in charge of the store, he gives him one simple, though slightly illegible rule: Don’t let Jerry in the store. Of course by the time Mike figures out what the note says, it’s too late: somehow in yet another one of his harebrained schemes, Jerry manages to get magnetized, and he wipes all of the tapes clean of content just by standing near them and then decides no one will notice if they just reenact the movies and rent out their own versions to the small town folk. Underneath the chuckles, though, Be Kind Rewind’s deeper character moments and strong emphasis on the importance of an artistic drive and entrepreneurship are what sets it apart from being just another slapstick buddy comedy.

Gondry is almost tongue-in-cheek with his message in Be Kind Rewind, one he tells through both men but in different ways. He wants everyone to get out there and tell their stories, regardless of the amount of money or the size of their crew, and he offers an almost feature length “how to” through Be Kind Rewind. Jerry is the carefree dreamer who finds a love of performing so much so that after they finish shooting their first “remake,” he stays in costume as Mike hands the tape over to a nosy customer (Mia Farrow). Conspicuously in her peripheral eyeline, he mouths lines from the movie in an attempt to get noticed. Black adds just enough desperation to his eyes in that scene that he suddenly stops being just another cartoonish character and becomes a complicated man. And it is in those moments the film really picks up on their journey.

While time seems to stand still in Be Kind Rewind (with the store being reluctant to stock DVDs and Mike clinging to old stories about a childhood hero), the result is never distracting or corny because the simpler things clung to are universally missed. These are two “every men” who did not set out to be heroes or revitalize their community, even though they stumble into doing just that. It is most satisfying and refreshing then, when Hollywood comes knocking on their door, it is not because they are so impressed with what they are doing; instead Gondry “keeps it real” with his plot twist and effortlessly weaves grace and naturalism into his slightly satirical film.

The most fun is had by the filmmakers and the audience alike during the sequences in which the amateurs film their own version of Ghostbusters, Rush Hour 2, and even The Lion King. There is something just innately thrilling about watching grown men (and women– Melonie Diaz’ slightly sophomoric Alma) run around their hometown with a handheld camera and sneak shots; it makes you want to get up and create something for yourself, too, and each brief snippet just leaves you wanting more… in a good way.

Reviewing Be Kind Rewind on DVD is poetic, and maybe even a little ironic, considering it is the medium to which Fletcher was fighting the conversion, and in following that tongue-in-cheek telling, Gondry inserted an additional scene directly into the feature on the disc—a scene that talks directly about Fletcher’s failing business because of his failure to adapt with the times and technology. At about a minute long, many might not remember this wasn’t in the theatrical version, but in its short time on screen it offers a bit more empathetic look at Fletcher and his business.

The DVD offers both original 2.35:1 widescreen and a compressed full screen version of the film, and all of the menus have the “homemade” look that Mike and Jerry made famous in their own films. It is a promising start to a disc that unfortunately cannot live up to the expectations. New Line only offers two real extras on this release: one is a ten-minute featurette (“Passaic Mosaic”) that features interviews from the cast as well as locals of the streets on which they filmed. While this extra is unique in that it actually looks at the “real people” (or the locals) who were brought in as consultants or background actors on the film, it cannot make up for the fact that the only other piece of bonus footage is the long version of the theatrical trailer. Considering other extras (like some of Mike and Jerry’s versions of classic films) leaked online almost immediately when the theatrical release was being promoted, it can only be assumed New Line is waiting to release a Special Edition– again a bit poetic as Mike and Jerry often had to make their customers wait for “custom” videos—though they did it because they hadn’t yet shot the titles, and New Line is just sitting on a goldmine.