Trent (Michael Garrow) and Lance (Kris Hulbert) don’t exactly have the best existence. Trent works at a shady collections agency, while Lance sleeps on his couch and makes up excuses as to why he can’t find work. They are weeks behind with their rent and dodging their landlord, but at least they still have a place to live – until today.
Lance drives Trent to work, only to find out that the place has been shut down because his boss was caught embezzling money. They then return home to find the locks changed, their stuff in garbage bags, and an eviction notice taped to the door. Rather than using their remaining and dwindling cash to find temporary housing and new jobs, they instead blow most of it at a bar. To make matters worse, they then discover that the car – with all their worldly possessions inside – has been towed. The boys are literally homeless.
Content
This film seems to follow the genre and structure of a lot of current movies – there is a plot, but it is really only incidental compared to the randomness that occurs on screen. Films like Napolean Dynamite or Dude, Where’s My Car? subscribe to this very unique style of filmmaking. On the one hand, it’s almost refreshing to see filmmakers pick up on something so different – I’ve watched many movies where I found the characters far more interesting than the plot, and would have much preferred to watch their random and quirky interactions with everyone around them (Captain Jack Sparrow, for instance, who’s persona was sadly muddied by the rather horrid sequels of Pirates of the Caribbean. But I digress.)
First Timers contains a lot of random dialogue between Trent and Lance, and the story isn’t really so much about their troubles finding a new place to live as it is about them as people and how they relate to the world. While this is definitely the better of the two approaches to be taken with a film like this, unfortunately, these two characters really aren’t all that interesting. I got the sense that the audience was supposed to find them funny, but many of their diatribes aren’t – except for perhaps a discussion of the TV show, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. I really found myself rolling my eyes at the antics of these two and wondering where they were when God handed out the common sense. If the point of the film was to create two rather unsympathetic main characters, that was certainly accomplished. But even if with such a goal, with the length of this movie, it gets a little annoying after a while.
In addition, the film’s ending (which I’m not going to give away) seemed very unrealistic. It’s highly improbable that such a twist of fate would befall these rather undeserving individuals. Plus, knowing their characters, in a few months they’ll probably be back in the same money-less situation.
There were a few other things that didn’t make sense – a bum who challenges Trent to checkers seems to show up randomly in a couple other instances. It seems as is he’s meant to be comic relief, but much like the two main characters, he’s just not that funny. In addition, when Trent and Lance return to their apartment to find the eviction notice, it seemed a little odd to me – sure the boys were behind on their rent, but normally a landlord has to give a certain number of days’ notice (this law varies from city to city) rather than just throwing a tenant out on the street. A fact like this isn’t a major one; we’ve all known some shady landlords in our time so most viewers would be able to suspend their disbelief, but one wonders why the boys didn’t try to seek police assistance in the matter.
Finally, there were a couple things at the beginning of the film that got in the way of the audience readily embracing the film. Most notably, an introductory sequence with Trent walking naked into the bathroom and then peeing for a good minute. There wasn’t any frontal nudity, but I didn’t exactly need to start off my first review of the month by seeing someone’s bare behind right in the middle of the screen for over a minute. Perhaps it’s just a guy thing, but in my opinion there are a few more appropriate ways to make a “getting ready in the morning” sequence.
