Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my first report from SXSW ’08. I have a look at a midnight horror comedy called OTIS and a documentary on the fandom surrounding HARRY POTTER called WE ARE WIZARDS. Let’s do dis.
OTIS
The cast list attracted me to this movie. You have people like Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas and Kevin Pollak, all great under-used character actors. The set up was pretty good, too. You have a kind of black comedy take on LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT… whitebread, do-gooder parents who take some sweet revenge on a local serial killer after their daughter is abducted.
The movie tries really hard to be funny and sometimes it succeeds. It’s definitely not a failure of a film. I wasn’t counting the minutes until it was over or anything, but it’s not an easy recommend.
Ashley Johnson plays the young lead. She’s all growed up and pretty smokin’ hot, to be a complete pig about it. Her character is smart, kind… just kind of an overall ideal girl. So, of course, she catches the eye of Otis, the fat and somewhat retarded serial killing pizza delivery man-child.
He’s obsessed with his older brother (played by Pollak) to the point that he’s driven to recreate his teen years with these different girls he kidnaps... essentially he role-plays with these girls and when they don’t cooperate he gets violent.
The movie opens with one of these girls fighting back and not getting very far. It’s kind of a SAW-ish opening.
As much as I love movies that switch genres on you, I had a problem staying with this one. I don’t have a problem jumping from horror to comedy, but it’s a delicate balancing act. You do it well and you have an amalgam with its own identity like SHAUN OF THE DEAD or EVIL DEAD 2. There are actually precious few horror comedies that work and a shit-ton that are made, especially on the independent level.
The reason this one didn’t really work for me was that it kept jumping back and forth from scene to scene… there didn’t seem to be a constant. There are characters like the parents (Douglas and Stern) that play most of the movie as honestly and as real as they can, then there are characters more cartoony than Roger Rabbit, like the gum-chewing clueless FBI agent trying to track down the kidnapper. They try to co-exist, but it wound up just being distracting when they crossed scenes.
The acting throughout is pretty good, but Kevin Pollak probably turned in the best performance. He always played it for the drama and not the comedy and that really worked for his pissed off older brother character.
The filmmaking is passable, but everything is lit too brightly, it felt too clean to sell any of the horror or atmosphere. The production design is pretty good. The dungeon where Otis keeps his girls is pretty gnarly and has a good hand-made creepiness about it, but it felt very video overall.
In fact, the movie is coming out this summer direct to DVD, but I get the impression from the Q&A afterwards that they’re hoping to get a limited theatrical release beforehand if reaction is good at the festival. The movie screams direct to DVD for me, but in the upper tier of DTV. I think it’d do well with a limited theatrical release, but I don’t know if it’d ever work broadly.
So, in case it’s not abundantly clear, I’m mixed on this one. Here's the trailer if you want to see what it looks like!
WE ARE WIZARDS
I am a HARRY POTTER fan, so of course I was interested in this premise.
With this film we kind of cherry pick the fandom surrounding the craze of Potter. There’s a strong focus on the Wizard Rock phenomenon, but we also follow fan-sites, the Christian reaction to the books and the negative hold the extremists believe it has on our youth.
If there was a main line through this doc it’d be with the Wizard Rock band Harry and the Potters, a band composed of two young brothers who put on the glasses, wear red and gold Gryffendor ties and sing original songs pertaining to the famous book series, usually from the perspective of Harry Potter.
The younger brother, Joe DeGeorge, is pretty damn hilarious. He’s the right blend of nerdy and funny, popping out one-liners (“Science is the new magic!”) while talking to the documentarian… very much playing for the camera, but in a very relaxed and conversational way that I’d expect really represents who he is.
In case you think the side of lightness and good gets all the camera time we also get to meet another group called Draco and the Malfoys who perform songs from the Draco Malfoy perspective, including one called My Dad Is Rich (followed by the lyrics “And Your Dad Is Dead”).
Also featured is the pretty damn funny Brad Neely who is now becoming pretty well known for his cartoon work with Super Deluxe. I first was exposed to Neely’s work with his awesome George Washington cartoon… check it out below if you haven’t seen it:
Neely actually got his start recording his own almost audio book-like running commentary for the first Harry Potter film, which was his in to this doc.
At first I thought he was going to be annoying, to tell you the truth. He was narrating some of his running commentary in a jumping, spastic high-pitched voice and I thought that was all to the guy, not even realizing it was the same dude that did the George Washington toon. But as the doc goes on he really brings a great edge to it, dropping F-bombs left and right and bringing a much different kind of humor to the story.
My main criticism of the film is that it is so broad that you don’t really get any in-depth story to follow or any real new information about the status of fandom. There were better documentaries glimpsed in this one. There’s a British Christian woman who speaks out about the evils of the book and how it’s a gateway to witchcraft, which is devil worship, etc. It’s an old argument about the Potter books, but I’d love to have seen more time dedicated to that woman and some counter-arguments against that train of thought.
As it stands it’s a really cute documentary, but one that I think might have too limited an audience. It might be an interesting peek inside the Potter fandom for those on the outside, but I don’t think there are too many on the outside that gives a shit what’s going on on the inside, if that makes any sense.
Alright, first two movies reviewed. More to come!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
