BEFORE: Finally, I made it to my back-to-school films for this year - I'm running a week or two late, I know that. Usually I'm able to get to them in late August, but this year that wasn't meant to be - too many rock concerts to listen to. But we're here, school is in session.
It's also time for the annual Toronto International Film Festival, so a lot of new films are making their debut there, and will no doubt be released in theaters over the next few weeks, with whatever festival buzz they're able to carry forward with them - today's film made its debut at that festival two years ago - along with "La La Land", "Lion", "Loving", "Jackie", "Arrival", "A Monster Calls", "Deepwater Horizon", "The Magnificent Seven", "Snowden", "The Birth of a Nation", "Bleed For This", "Manchester By the Sea", "Mascots", "Nocturnal Animals", "Sing", "Moonlight" and "The Rolling Stones Olé Olé Olé: A Trip Across Latin America". Wow, that's a lot of important films, and those are just the ones I've seen, there were many others. Toronto's become a huge part of the festival scene, and I think it's got everything to do with the calendar - a film that's ready for a festival screening in December, if it makes a big splash in Toronto, could then be ready for a release in December and thus qualify for the Oscars.
And if it doesn't do well in Toronto in September, and doesn't secure a release, could still play in Sundance in January. It's very sneaky that Toronto is the biggest, closest festival to the U.S. that isn't IN the U.S. I remember driving up to Toronto in 1997 to screen a film I'd produced, and we then screened it a few months later at Sundance. Both festivals require premiere status, but Toronto requires a world premiere, and Sundance only requires a U.S. premiere. It's just one of the quirks of the calendar.
Woody Harrelson carries over again from "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Lady Bird" (Movie #2,953)
THE PLOT: High school life gets even more unbearable for Nadine when her best friend, Krista, starts dating her older brother.
AFTER: Ah, if only Hollywood screenwriters could crack the mysteries of the teenage girl's mind. There are so many questions that need to be answered, like "Why don't they read more comic books?" "Why don't they just get on board and watch more action movies?" and "What's with all the holes in the knees of their jeans, is that a thing - hey, would you buy a pair of jeans that ALREADY had holes in the jeans, and if not, why not?" They keep asking these questions but so far, they haven't found a teenage girl that was willing to respond. It seems that all they ever get in response is "As if..." "Like, sure, not really, JK" and then that eye-rolling thing they do, followed by a disgruntled sigh.
So instead we get a flood of movies like "Lady Bird", "The Diary of a Teenage Girl and "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", which feature Hollywood's best guesses on how teenage girls act and think, and who even knows if they're coming anywhere close to the mark? You have to wonder if things were easier back in the days of "Clueless" and "Mean Girls", when every character could just be a walking stereotype. These days it's so easy for a film to get accused of gender bias or racially insensitive humor, that it almost feels like every script is written in a very complex way to avoid these things, while still finding a way to be both racially diverse in casting and not offend any one group in any way. But as a result there becomes this sort of bland sameness to every scene that takes place in front of high-school hallway lockers.
Perhaps today's teens really are this annoying - I wouldn't really know, since I've never raised one, but all of the ones I see out in public certainly are - but that doesn't really justify making such a gripe the focus of a film. This lead character was much too complain-y for me, like in the scene where she's frustrated because she's noticed a resemblance between herself and Pedro from "Napoleon Dynamite". Well, OK, but in the time it takes you to complain about this, you can probably come up with a simple solution, like never wear THAT shirt again, or maybe get your hair cut, or straightened or something. Yeah, thank God we live in a modern age where girls aren't completely obsessed with their looks - oh, wait, some of them genuinely are. But the main character of a thoughtful teen drama (comedy?) probably shouldn't be.
in fact, it's a bad idea to make any reference to "Napoleon Dynamite", because that film was genuinely quirky/funny, and bringing it up just really highlighted the fact that this one wasn't. It hits some of the same notes - rivalry with an older brother, first awkward attempts at relationships, and a high-school setting where every student is CLEARLY in their mid-to-late twenties - but that's about it. Napoleon was a really weird character, so over-the-top weird that you just had to root for him, and even when he was alone and down he still sort of had an air of confidence about him, but Nadine here is just the opposite. Whenever anything happens to her, she just shuts down and complain about how the world is unfair and apparently out to get her, and that's no fun.
I had the same thought as Nadine's mother (only I thought of it earlier) about how some girls might take their best friend dating their brother as a positive, because if that relationship works out, then maybe someday they can be best friends AND sisters-in-law, and if it doesn't work out, well, that's one more person on her side that hates her brother. Really, it's a win-win, but with Nadine, the glass is always half-empty. Look, I didn't have the greatest high school experience in the world either, but I just put my head down and got through it by ignoring the haters and focusing on the things I was good at, like taking standardized tests, singing, being a mathlete and reading some life into the morning announcements.
I think that's what high school is really all about, trying a lot of different things, and finding the things that you can excel at or that bring you joy. But when you hate absolutely everything about it, then it seems like a big waste of four years, or an hour and 45 minutes in the case of this movie. OK, so finally she learns to get over herself at the end, but I think it's too little, too late.
Also starring Hailee Steinfeld (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), Haley Lu Richardson (last seen in "Split"), Blake Jenner, Hayden Szeto, Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Eric Keenleyside (last seen in "Godzilla"), Alexander Calvert, Lina Renna, Ava Grace Cooper, Christian Michael Cooper.
RATING: 4 out of 10 suicide notes
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