To
quote a recent commercial, “Having a baby changes everything.” Take
the most hardened, disagreeable, and roughhousing man and place his newborn baby
in his arms, and he will most likely break down and weep. This short film is a
documentary of one such man, known by friends as Joe Ma Ma, a former badass biker
dude, now a father and owner of a motorcycle repair shop. He spends his days at
work, rehashing good days with his buddies, but the rest of the day belongs to
his kids.
Content
For
a documentary, this film is very random. It opens with the title as a neon sign
(which one later comes to realize is the name of Joe’s shop), then cuts to
inside the shop where Joe is telling stories about the crazy things he did as
a young man. The film cuts back and forth between Joe and his kids – as he
helps build a pumpkin cart for his son – and his time at the motorcycle shop.
The problem with
this random nature is that the audience spends half of the movie trying to figure
out who and what the documentary is supposed to be about. And once one figures
that out, the movie is nearly over. The characters should be introduced by some
kind of narration – which could be done by Joe – or perhaps just by
simple titles.
There
is one touching story that Joe tells about a son who died at age 15 from sniffing
glue. As he tells this story, he is holding a photograph, but the audience never
get a chance to see it. A quick cutaway to the photograph there – and perhaps
to other photos of Joe as a younger man – would give some more depth and
weight to the story.
Visual
Look
The visuals
of this film are quite decent. Inside the motorcycle shop is very well-lit, and
the exteriors aren’t too bad, if a little bit washed out. The interior shots
of Joe building his son’s pumpkin cart and of the Boy Scouts derby that follows
have a bit of a yellowish tint to them that may have been caused by either improper
white balancing or fluorescent lights.
There
were a couple shaky camera moves, but as the entire style of the film was sort
of run-and-gun that didn’t seem to be such a big deal. Though there was one
shot where Joe and his son got into a pickup truck, and the cameraman squeezed
in with them while still taping. The result was that the cameraman seemed to be
pressed back against the passenger door so as to get both Joe and his son in the
shot, but the shot looked far too tight. It may have been a better idea to just
use different series of shots or, if the filmmakers really wanted a shot inside
the truck, try to mount the camera in the dash instead. (Yeah, it’s rather
tricky, but it is possible, and the final result looks pretty cool.)
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