I was very curious to see this film about a twelve-year-old American superstar who goes AWOL on the set of an absurdly over-the-top action flick being shot in Toronto (the boy plays the incorrigible son of the US President who must save America after his father is captured by terrorists), but it’s fairly derivative. I’m thinking Don McKellar hoped to make a satiric, cinematic indictment of a culture obsessed with erotic innocence (think Paddy Chayefsky filtered through James Kincaid), but such plans are tricky. How can you capture such a subject without falling pray to the very impulses you hope to critique? Indeed, though Taylor Brandon Burns is a petulant, spoiled brat—spurned on by a mother always looking for a bigger paycheck—what he really wants to be is a normal boy (what that exactly means is up for grabs). I guess the film never felt dangerous enough. Sure, the kid is an ugly American who—chastely—loses his virginity to a quasi-prostitute (on the set in a replica of the Oval Office), but McKellar and co-writer Michael Goldbach offer up little more than a pastiche of coming-of-age clichés masquerading as a character. And McKellar’s character—a former film studies professor now indie filmmaker who drives the rich and famous to work to put food on the table—is also problematic. Is he the voice of reason/father figure Taylor’s been looking for or is he simply looking for a star to hitch himself to (or does he just want to fuck Taylor’s mom)? Anyway . . . Dave Foley is a lot of fun. Kincaid acolytes will be sad to learn there are no bottoms on display, but there is a running joke concerning a Hollywood rumor involving goldfish and the boy’s ass, so I guess that will suffice.
Day: September 15, 2005
light, frothy fun
keeping the topic title general so that others can add to it as well, but what i really want to plug is a bollywood blockbuster from this summer: bunty aur babli. a wonderful piece of entertainment about a young man and a young woman from two small towns somewhere in north india who decide that they want the kind of exciting life that they read about happening elsewhere in the country. so they run away, meet each other and begin a life of cons and scams. the plot (or the film’s view of the small town/big city divide) doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny but the film is so giddy it doesn’t matter. the actors–abhishek bachchan and rani mukherjee–are perfect, the writing is good (and the subtitles mostly adequate), and the direction and music are also excellent. the movie does sag for the last 25 minutes (it is about 2 hours 40 long) but moves pretty quickly until then. i think it should be pretty accessible to non-indian audiences, though some of the nuances of accent and demeanour (which are codes for issues of class etc.) will probably get lost. netflix has it, so if you’re interested in mostly mindless fun or in seeing what’s big in india these days, rent it. it also features a blockbuster “item” song (featuring aishwarya rai) that’s been all the rage in the country for some months now.