"We Are The Best!": Good Enough Critic Candy

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We Are The Best! knows exactly what it’s trying to be, and it does it quite well.  As a study of adolescence and what makes rebellion so appealing to the youngest of budding adults, the movie knows its stuff, and it comes off as genuinely knowledgeable and heartfelt.  Critics almost universally loved this film in its festival circuit and U.S. theatrical runs, which should lend to its credibility all the more.  After all, that’s why I chose to review this particular film in the first place.  And yet, I feel pretty ambivalent about this one.

Just to clarify, We Are The Best! is a good film.  There’s really nothing particularly wrong with it, for the cast is perfectly suited to their roles and the themes are resonant.  In 1982 in Stockholm, two thirteen-year-old best friends are really into punk rock.  They cut their hair short and don’t pretty themselves up like the other girls; after all, punk is not as dead as everyone says, at least not to them.  Fed up with being called ugly and strange for not conforming, the girls start to vent their frustrations by writing and playing their own punk song.  They realize that they’re not very musically talented, so they recruit a third member, a quiet Christian girl with no other friends who is good at playing guitar.  The oddly-matched threesome grow as friends and try their best to be as adult as possible, though their confused feelings at any given moment may get in their way.

So yeah, the film portrays adolescence pretty accurately, from the mood swings to the misunderstandings between well-meaning friends to the use of creative outlets to cope with their burgeoning adulthood and everyone’s insistence that they’re still children.  Yet I’m still pretty nonplussed by what should be a well-received experience.  Is it that I feel like this has been done before?  Spielberg is perhaps the most notable director to show young teenagers as naturalistically as possible, yet this film doesn’t share his penchant for youthful romanticism.

No, I think the issue is that the film doesn’t really hold itself up on more than its theming.  This isn’t really a film about getting a band together or overcoming other peoples’ expectations; it’s a snapshot of a bunch of pseudo-kids learning to say “Fuck you!” to everyone’s expectations of who they should be.  And yeah, that’s fine and all, but it feels a bit shallow in its thematic depth.  There’s some feminism interwoven with the primary message as well, but it feels like the obligatory subtext inherent in having three female leads rather than a fully fleshed out theme.  I guess I felt unsatisfied because I wanted the film to show me something more, something new, something that hasn’t been the subject of just about every coming-of-age story ever, albeit with a punk rock aesthetic this time around.

We Are The Best! seems to me like a film that’s being praised right now upon its release, but nobody’s going to remember it in the years to come.  It hits the sentimental soft spots that the film press really seems to gravitate toward, but it doesn’t do much with that sentiment other than tell a fairly standard coming-of-age tale.  I still think it’s a well-done film; I’m just disappointed by its lack of ambition.

Is punk dead?  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

"The Rover": Diamonds In Its Rough

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The Rover reminds me a lot of a certain television show: The Walking Dead.  Just take away the Zombie Apocalypse and replace it with classic Apocalypse Generic, and the Hobbesian atmosphere of oppression and survival of the strongest will dominate your feelings during the film’s runtime.  However, much like The Walking Dead, this movie has its ups and downs, serving to be really intriguing and thought-provoking at key moments, but the quieter moments mostly serve to bore or seem more loftily intelligent than they actually are.

Our story starts out with a group of thieves fleeing a robbery and leaving behind an injured member named Rey, played by a surprisingly decent Robert Pattinson.  The gang then crashes their vehicle and steals a car belonging to Eric, a bitterly violent man who isn’t willing to give up his car at any cost, played by Guy Pearce.  After losing the gang’s trail, Eric begins to track down the thieves and eventually finds Rey in desperate need of medical attention.  Realizing that Rey is his only chance of tracking down his car, Eric takes the injured man with him, and the two begin a journey to hunt down the thieves.

The enjoyment of this film mainly relies on the sympathy one feels for the main characters.  Eric is a stoic protagonist with a past that he is less than willing to talk about.  He’s ruthless, but not bloodthirsty.  He only wants back what is his, and when the reasons for hunting down this specific car become clear in the final scene of the film, it is a brutally chilling revelation.  Rey, on the other hand, is a slow-witted man trying to come to grips with being betrayed by his brother, one of the gang members who left him behind to die.  Rey struggles with the fact that the one person he’d relied on his entire life for love and companionship would leave him for dead, and the young man’s journey toward self-reliance is both hopeful and heartbreaking.

And yet, for every good character moment, there’s another that seems pointlessly drawn out.  There are perhaps one or two too many driving montage scenes where nothing really happens except some bizarre orchestration; I understand that much of the time spent between Eric and Rey is silently driving, but I don’t really see the need to show that.  Furthermore, Rey gets some scenes to himself that don’t really do much to further the plot or his character development, and really only seem to be there to ensure that Pattinson gets as much screen time as Pearce.  This has the consequence of drawing out an already subdued and thoughtful film into a boring and plodding one.

I feel that I can recommend The Rover for its good moments, for by the time the climax rolls around those moments tend to overshadow any bad ones.  This is a solid work with some solid performances and a solid story.  It has its pacing issues and its mild pretentions, but overall, I think it’s worth seeing.  This was a flop at the box office, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it make its money back through DVD purchases.  Check out The Rover when you get the chance.

Any post-apocalyptic films strike your fancy?  And please, don’t everyone jump up and say Mad Max.  Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

"Neighbors": A Couple Of Rising Stars

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In all honesty, I was a little afraid of what this movie meant for Seth Rogen’s career.  He’s always been a slacker-stoner archetype, mostly because I think that he’s very much like that in real life, and he’s always been really funny because of it.  So when I heard he stars in a movie with a plot synopsis that sounds like a premise to a bad sitcom, and the character who I would normally associate his persona with is being played by Disney teen starlet Zac Efron, I had some serious reservations about it.  And yet, lo and behold, this is exactly the type of movie it needed to be, and it’s a great preview of the career paths for both Rogen and Efron.  Oh, and let’s not forget, it’s really damn funny!

The story is that married couple Mac and Kelly (played by Rogen and Rose Bryne, respectively) have poured all their money into a new house and are looking forward to raising their infant daughter there.  However, when a fraternity moves into the house next door, the couple becomes worried that the noise will disturb their tranquil new home.  The fraternity’s president, Teddy, is played by Efron, and he only wants to leave a legacy behind for future generations of the frat, so it’s his goal to throw the most over-the-top parties imaginable.  And so, a series of escalating pranks take place so as to try and force each other to move out.

What sounds like it should be a corny set-up is actually cleverly executed.  As I said before, I think that Rogen would have fit into the frat-boy persona decently enough a few years ago, but this film acknowledges something pretty important here: Rogen isn’t getting any younger.  Rogen’s pot-smoking loser antics aren’t going to hold up forever, so something needs to change.  Neighbors gets meta-textual about the whole issue and makes Rogen’s character a new family man who is essentially trying to recapture the lost devil-may-care attitude that he had only five years ago.  It’s a stroke of genius, and yet it never goes so far as to imply that he’s neglectful of his adult responsibilities, which would make him a tired mid-life crisis cliché.  In fact, his wife is right there with him the entire time, and the way they make their adult lives work around trying to screw over the fraternity is the set-piece of at least a couple well-done scenes.

And of course, the big surprise hit here is seeing Zac Efron put on the big boy shoes and actually do some damn fine acting.  He knows how to deliver a funny line and actually seems to fit right in to the shoes that Rogen has left for him to fill.  Not only that, but his character actually has some surprising depth to him, allowing Efron to shine as a dramatic actor for a few short scenes, and yet never brings the light-hearted feeling of the production to a halt.  Efron is someone who’s going to be sticking around for a while, and if he can keep up this good work, I’ll be happy to see him.

I should also make note of Rose Bryne’s great comedic touches as well; she isn’t as well-known as Rogen or Efron, so I can’t really analyze her career trajectory, but she’s just as valuable to the film as the two male leads.  And yeah, I suppose I should close out by mentioning the most important thing in reviewing a comedy: it’s really damn funny.  It’s hard to say more than that without giving away the humorous surprises, as is per usual in a comedy, but I will say that it makes full use of the R rating.  Even the gross-out humor that would have fallen flat in any other film is made charming by Rogen’s and Efron’s charisma.  Neighbors is everything I wanted it to be, and it is well worth the time investment to get a few genuine laughs.

What’s your favorite Seth Rogen film?  Let me know in the comments below.