SIFF: Submarine
Richard Ayoade's Submarine has been plastered with praise from film festival to film festival, lauded in the UK, and has been picked up by the Weinstein Company for distribution in the US. All this chatter made me curious to see what's been touted as a hilarious British coming-of-age story. On paper (and in the trailer), the material was good. Based on the novel of the same name by Joe Dunthorne, the movie is about Oliver, a 15-year-old boy in Wales in the 1980s, star of his own melodrama. He's crushed out on classmate Jordana and fears his parents' marriage is crumbling. Aided by his deadpan voice-over, we follow him as he tries to navigate his first relationship and to intervene before his parents split up.
Some of this film works well: moments of adolescent awkwardness ring true, moments of parental attempts at cool are sweetly painful to watch. At the same time, I sometimes had the sense that the movie was trying a little too hard for its subtle humor, and that some of those attempts didn't exactly fall flat, but kind of fell into that middle ground where they weren't funny, but weren't terrible either--they were just . . . there. Like facts. That was the whole second half of the film for me. It was just there, well made, occasionally mildly funny, but not terribly special. Maybe you had to be in Wales in the '80s to appreciate some of it (though it didn't look terribly different from the '80s I remember--the landscape was different, but the clothes and hair weren't), or maybe the director just didn't quite capture--for me, anyway--the full humor or pathos or sympathy he reached for. Or maybe the film was overhyped. When I had to rate it for the festival awards, I gave it a 3 out of 5. frabjousdave, whom I met at the theater, called his rating a "pity 3" because he didn't even like it that much but felt bad giving it a 2. I think we both wanted to like it, but couldn't bring ourselves to be dishonest about not liking it better.
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In other SIFF news, I was able to trade my unusable Cameraman ticket for a voucher. I'm not sure how I'll use it, because I'm not sure where I'll be able to fit in another film. Maybe someone wants to join me for something?
Some of this film works well: moments of adolescent awkwardness ring true, moments of parental attempts at cool are sweetly painful to watch. At the same time, I sometimes had the sense that the movie was trying a little too hard for its subtle humor, and that some of those attempts didn't exactly fall flat, but kind of fell into that middle ground where they weren't funny, but weren't terrible either--they were just . . . there. Like facts. That was the whole second half of the film for me. It was just there, well made, occasionally mildly funny, but not terribly special. Maybe you had to be in Wales in the '80s to appreciate some of it (though it didn't look terribly different from the '80s I remember--the landscape was different, but the clothes and hair weren't), or maybe the director just didn't quite capture--for me, anyway--the full humor or pathos or sympathy he reached for. Or maybe the film was overhyped. When I had to rate it for the festival awards, I gave it a 3 out of 5. frabjousdave, whom I met at the theater, called his rating a "pity 3" because he didn't even like it that much but felt bad giving it a 2. I think we both wanted to like it, but couldn't bring ourselves to be dishonest about not liking it better.
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In other SIFF news, I was able to trade my unusable Cameraman ticket for a voucher. I'm not sure how I'll use it, because I'm not sure where I'll be able to fit in another film. Maybe someone wants to join me for something?