The marquee at the Alamo South Lamar, home to Day 6 of my SXSW experience. Immediately below the frame, a line of over 200 waited in anticipation for Broken Lizard's latest, The Slammin' Salmon.Being a SXSW first-timer, I wasn’t aware of the unspoken rule that weaker movies tend to run during the second half of the festival (aside from perhaps the final day), so I booked my stay through Friday morning. While two of the four flicks I attempted on Day 6 were decent, the crop on Day 7 (coverage coming soon) was pretty rough. My stay next year will definitely be shorter. Rest assured, however: the quantity of films I see will remain the same. I’ll just be cramming them into a smaller chunk of time—catching all the Midnight shows—in hopes of a higher percentage of good ones.
The film follows Robert (Erza Miller), an insecure, bottled-up teenager who can’t relate to the other kids at his Northeast prep school. Perhaps this is because they know he spends his days watching violent porn videos on the Internet, blowing his load to the sight of women getting strangled and other charming things. Perhaps it’s because his roommate deals drugs. Or perhaps, as the movie would like us to think, it’s because modern technology and social structures in America have singlehandedly turned him into a basket case.
Despite Robert’s social issues, his attractive partner on a school film project, Amy (Addison Timlin), inexplicably makes advances toward him. The story, however, takes a radical turn when Robert, filming footage for said project, witnesses popular female twin classmates die in what’s later found to be a drug overdose, camera rolling. His abnormal reaction to the incident—not calling for help as the girls cough up blood and then behaving, well, disturbingly around the bodies—seems to alert the clueless school staff to the fact that Robert’s probably more than a little effed up, but they choose to ignore this an appropriately bureaucratic fashion. His assigned therapy is to make the memorial film that will be shown at an assembly commemorating the girls.
For a film so contemporary and distinctly young in subject and in style—writer/director Campos is only 25—Afterschool takes a puzzlingly bleak attitude towards the present teenage generation. It’s more than a little ironic that Campos’ assault on the YouTube era could not have been made without modern technology. The film’s central thesis seems to be that new media, especially Internet pornography, allow troubled youth to explore dark emotions that attract them and hence lead to a more detached, problematic society. While I think this is a bullshit assertion to begin with, Afterschool does itself no favors by evidencing the message through an unredeemed loser of a main character. Robert is so screwed up that it’s hard to believe he wasn’t a victim of child abuse and wouldn’t have reached his breaking-point without YouTube at any other time in history.
One could argue that the movie merely seeks to explore how new media affect one disturbed individual and not make the aforementioned blanket-judgments about the 21st Century world. If this is the case, the film is even worse because, when not viewed as a human hyperbole or a device to communicate broader themes, Robert is completely unbelievable. Certainly, there were screwed up kids like Robert at my high school, but they weren’t so removed from reality that they wouldn’t scream if they saw two girls dying in a corridor.
One wonders if the film is actually more personal than its writer/director would admit. If Robert is indeed a version of Campos, then the filmmaker’s motivations make a lot more sense. Could Afterschool actually be little more than an F-you to Campos’ own film teacher who, like Robert’s in the movie, criticized his crude attempts at the avant-garde because they weren’t narrative or sentimental enough? (Robert’s tribute stylistically resembles Afterschool and inspires a big “What was that!?” from the teacher, who then cuts it into the video equivalent of Hallmark greeting card for the actual presentation.) Could Campos’ own awkward lack of luck with the ladies at his prep school be the reason he had the beautiful Amy so much as befriend Robert? These are big character accusations that I probably shouldn’t be making—apologies to Campos if they’re untrue, of course—but the movie’s critique of contemporary American society reeks deeply of self-idealization and catharsis that this seems like the only logical explanation. With a concept that’s only provocative in theory, not execution, Afterschool exploits its teenage characters and its violence to form a morally reprehensible vision of the age in which we live. ½ a Bucket out of 4.
While Afterschool was a bad start to the day, it gave way to two festival-firsts that I was proud to experience. #1 was that I saw a movie at the South Lamar, the festival’s bigger and in many ways better-equipped Alamo location (complimentary water is available as you enter each auditorium and there is WiFi, an invaluable asset for us film critics), where I would remain all day. #2 was my first-ever walk-out, which I pulled on the subsequent show of the Oprah-esque documentary Motherhood realizing that two bad movies in a row would not affect my mood in a positive way. Not to mention, the two hours of free time provided me a great opportunity to write… and eavesdrop on Cinematical’s brilliant Scott Weinberg, sitting several benches down, as he ferociously typed and talked with a cigarette in his mouth, looking up only to compliment and tip—yes, tip—a pretty festival volunteer playing a Decemberists song on the ukulele. Please don’t send e-mails about how I inappropriately lurk on others; I’m quite aware of the behavior.
After that nice, long break, I settled in for The Eyes of Me, a documentary on the lives of four students at Austin’s own School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. While the movie’s blind stars would’ve had to have been gymnasts or rock-drummers to ensure a theatrical release—are you listening, Christopher Guest?—writer/director Keith Maitland’s simple take on the everyday challenges and triumphs of his subjects is engaging enough that a premium cable deal is not out of the question. The film’s most distinguished quality is that Davidson avoids all the congratulatory, score-infused moments typical of the genre in favor of a more subdued and introspective look at the topic. Thus, emotion organically arises from the film’s subjects, not its style.
While all four young people featured in The Eyes of Me are interesting—two are just entering TSVBI and two are about to graduate—one stands out far above the rest. His name is Chas, and he’s not only blind, but poor. (How’s that for a tough break?) Out on his own, living with a roommate who picks up and leaves without paying his half of the rent, Chas somehow still squeaks by, working in a factory that employs the blind. Given the somewhat foreign nature of the subject-matter for most viewers, Chas’ everyman demeanor and common problems forge a relatable bond that makes the material more involving. Chas is also an aspiring rapper—the film’s title is based on one of his songs—but the quality of his charisma far supersedes that of his music. The film’s depiction of Chas is emblematic of why it succeeds on the whole: it’s more about humans with a disability than it is about the disability itself. It’s hard to saywhere The Eyes of Me will ultimately end up, but if you have a chance to catch it on the festival circuit, it’s a worthy way to spend a quick 72 minutes. 3 Buckets out of 4.
My final movie for the day was yet another SXSW selection that one wouldn’t find playing at any other film festival: The Slammin’ Salmon, courtesy of the beloved-in-circles Broken Lizard comedy troupe (Super Troopers, Beerfest). While I have never been a fan of the quintet myself, this latest entry on their resume worked for me because it abandons their usual crude style—no small feat for the gang given gross-out gags are easy to do in food-related comedies—and because it stars some highly talented non-Lizards.
The premise is simple enough: former boxer and Miami seafood restaurant owner Cleon ‘Slammin’ Salmon (played by a balls-to-the walls, outrageous Michael Clark Duncan) has to come up with $10,000 quickly so he can settle his debts with some Yakuza members. He challenges floor manager Rich Ferente (Kevin Heffernan) to do $20,000 in sales – $10,000 for the Yakuzas and $10,000 for the waiter with the biggest bills. Broad comedy ensues as the colorful group—off-his-meds Nuts (Jay Chandrasekhar), med-student Tara (Cobie Smulders), flirt Mia (April Bowlby), retard Donnie (Paul Soter), and washed-up “CFI: Hotlanta” star Conor (Steve Lemme)—duke it out for the 10 grand.
While the individual jokes aren’t laugh-out-loud funny in and of themselves, the characterizations are. Michael Clarke Duncan lets all hang loose and somehow comes off as a completely credible boxer-turned-businessman, as manic and irresponsible as he is charming. Both of the women—“How I Met Your Mother”’s invaluable Cobie Smulders and “Two and a Half Men”’s ditzy charmer April Bowlby—are very funny and great to look at. Will Forte has a hilarious bit part as a patron who spends the day sipping on water and iced tea, reading War & Peace cover-to-cover, much to the chagrin of his money-hungry waitress. And the whole Broken Lizard crew is the best they’ve ever been, especially Jay Chandrasekhar, who proves far more apt at physical comedy than usual, perhaps because for once he isn’t on his double-duty directing. This time, that task went to Kevin Heffernan, who does a competent job at moving the picture along.
While The Slammin’ Salmon is decidedly minor and contains a few passages in which the humor falls flat, it’s one of the spunkier comedies I’ve recently seen, certainly the best Broken Lizard effort to date. That’s not a monumental accomplishment, but it’s highly refreshing amidst all the heavy movies and bad movies one encounters at a film festival. Why no distributor will so much as touch the film is a mystery to me, especially when considering the fact that studios have historically not only had no problems releasing, but also funding, the group’s past works. 3 Buckets out of 4.
Tempted as I was to stick around and watch the midnight showing of Lesbian Vampire Killers based on the film’s title alone, I decided against it when I spotted an open cab surfing the parking lot, a rarity during the music portion of the festival. Unfortunately, I would end up well-rested for a pretty disappointing final set of films. More on that tomorrow.
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