Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Today kicked off with a screening of Terri, a film starring John C. Reilly and newcomer Jacob Wysocki as the title character.
Going into the movie I’d heard mixed things and I understand some of the criticisms… Terri is not one of those films that has a huge range or any major character arc. It’s a sweet little character study about a fat kid coming out of his shell a little bit at a time until he has some friends and a bit of a romance.
Terri doesn’t end the movie in a radically different place than he began it, but he has changed for the better.
I think this film worked so well for me because I could relate to Terri. I was the fat kid in school, too, but I wasn’t really bullied so much. At least not in High School. The kids in Elementary school were much, much more cruel little fuckheads. Thinking back on them now I wonder if they grew up into cruel adults or matured at all. I’d imagine some of them are just dyed in the wool horrible people, but people can change.
And since things got better for me in Junior High and High School they didn’t do any lasting damage, but this movie has made me think back to those days a little and the “I wonder…” game has started up in the old noggin’.
Listen, us fat guys don’t have a lot of movies where we’re not represented as the goofy jokester or the likable chubby kid that always has a candy bar in his pocket (or who chugs giant tubs of ranch dressing for some goddamn reason… Jesus Christ, Lost… why?!?), so when one comes around it’s something to cherish.
Off the top of my head we have Angus and now Terri that have focused on the shy, fat high schooler just trying to survive school. There are other flicks that cover a different side, the popular jokester fattie, like Animal House and Superbad, but that’s not who I was. I totally love those movies, but I can see myself in Terri and Angus, even if they are far more extreme examples of what my own personal experiences were.
Basically Terri doesn’t have any role models and has been forced to grow up faster than he probably should have. His parents abandoned him and he lives with his Uncle James, played by The Office’s Creed Bratton. Uncle James seems to be fluctuating between clear and foggy… I’m not sure if it’s Alzheimer’s or what, but whatever the sickness Terri has to be the main caregiver.
So the dude feels lost. He knows school makes him miserable, he knows he loves his Uncle, he knows he has a crush on the cute blonde in Home Ec. and all the rest he’s feeling out as he goes.
Now I mentioned there’s no big character arc and that’s true, but Terri does have to find a new outlook by the end of things, greatly helped by his shaky friendship with the maybe too nice principal played by John C. Reilly.
This relationship is the heart of the movie and you can never really tell where it’s going. There’s a part when you think Reilly might just be playing mind games with the more losery kids at school, there’s a part where you think he’s just a lonely guy trying to reach out, a part where he comes off as borderline creepy… But ultimately this acts as a mentor relationship that introduces Terri into a slightly more social state of being.
He becomes friends with a hair-pulling morbid little guy named Chad (Bridger Zadina, who reminds me very much of Noah Hathaway, aka Atreyu in The Neverending Story). He’s a tiny kid, too, which serves as a great Oliver and Hardy like visual gag as they begin to spend more time together.
This duo becomes an awkward trio as the hot blonde Terri has been obsessing over is caught getting fingered by her sleazy boyfriend in class. Suddenly this popular girl has become an outcast (or monster as Terri refers to everybody on the social skids) overnight.
Young Olivia Crocicchia (Rescue Me) play Heather with a soft vulnerability that makes her easy to feel sympathetic for. I’m not sure how I think of her when all is said and done, but I can say that I believe her character was very honest in her appreciation for Terri being the only one not to turn on her after the “incident.”
There’s a slight budding romance here that is handled… unconventionally, lets say… by the finale, which has Chad being the biggest cockblocker in recent movie history and an awkward hang out that really puts a solid focus on everybody’s relationships.
It might not blow everybody’s hair back, but due to the subject matter it was really easy for me to put myself into the lead’s shoes. Us fatties don’t have a Tyler Perry that caters to us with every movie they put out, so I’ll take a heroic fat dude romantic comedy/coming of age flick when I can get ‘em!
If you want an up to the minute account of what I’m seeing and my immediate verdict on Sundance flicks as I see them be sure to follow me on Twitter!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
