David’s life sucks. He is being picked on by a bully, and is unable to stand up for himself. Because of this, his friends don’t want to hang out with him, and the girl he has a crush on won’t have anything to do with him. David has dreams of being a business mogul someday, like his idol Donald Trump, but these dreams seem entirely too far out of reach, until one day when his luck suddenly changes.
Content
Warning – Spoilers ahead!
This film has a great opening sequence, which consists of David being chased by the bully. There’s even a shot of the two of them running across some train tracks, after which a train goes by (which I’m guessing was faked to avoid serious injury on the part of the actors, but it’s still a really nice shot.) This type of chase sequence does a great job at grabbing an audience right away, but the rest of the film just doesn’t deliver. Sadly, it takes a fast-paced beginning and just keeps slowing it down, seemingly dragging out the ending to reach the 60-minute mark. T here is one other great scene where David finally stands up for himself and sucker-punches the bully, which leads his friends to back him up, but sadly there are few other scenes like this.
One difficulty I had was figuring out who the characters were. There are a number of kids David’s age, a couple of girls, David’s grandmother, and a couple of older teenagers. But as not all their names are given, it’s hard to figure out the plot, even harder when the boys are shown as grown-ups twenty-some years later; not to mention all the new characters that are introduced at that point, much to the confusion of the audience. A film with a large cast of characters, especially with many who play important roles, faces the difficult challenge of clearly identifying all the players in an audience member’s mind. The original Ocean’s Eleven did it by using The Rat Pack. Steven Soderburg’s versions used all A-list actors. Unfortunately, neither of these is a viable option for the microfilmmaker, as the former option would involve grave-robbing and necromancy, and the latter a budget the size of Michael Moore’s ego.
A more manageable solution can be found by watching an early scene in Guy Ritchie’s film Snatch. This movie’s convoluted storylines and large cast of characters necessitated their introductions early on, which led to Ritchie’s creative solution. (Say what you want about Madonna, but her former other half is a very creative filmmaker!) One doesn’t have to have a major special effects budget either. I once saw a very low-budget imitation of that introduction, which involved a series of college students running around campus and tossing each other a videocassette tape. Each time one of them caught it, the image would freeze-frame, along with their names. This type of introduction could easily be put together, especially with a cast of kids who seemed so gung-ho, and the Steadicam operator that the production employed.
Toward the end of the film, there is a transition from an image of all the kids together, which becomes a photograph on the wall of a conference room. Inside this conference room stand the kids – now all grown men – who are getting together, some for the first time in years. The transition is a creative one, and is also very well-done. However, the scene which follows just seems to continue the film’s slowing pace, and seems even worse at trying to stretch the film out. It is clear that the film is trying to explain to the audience what has happened to these men by use of dialogue, but the lines just sound stilted and forced. For example, when they were children, David happens to mention to his best friend that his little sister has a crush on him – a fact that seems repulsive to the young man. As adults, the two are having a casual conversation, into which David says, “Well, you did marry my sister Ashley,” a line which sounds not only fake, but very out of place in a conversation between two close friends.
