Sneaky Cinema Double Feature: Adventureland & Dear Zachary

Shoot the Freak: The Adventureland Review
Adventureland
Billed as a comedy and starring a dude who looks just like Michael Cera (of Juno and Superbad fame), Adventureland is a bit of a bait-and-switch, at least in the way it's marketed. Sure, there are funny moments-- but doesn't every movie have at least one or two of those? I never saw Schindler's List but would assume there was a chuckle or two written in, probably at the expense of the Nazis. But I wouldn't call it a comedy.

It's the same with Adventureland.

The overall summary is that James Brennan is a 23 year old virgin (really?) and recent college graduate with a fantastic white-man-afro who, after his family falls into some financial despair (I can relate!), has to work at an amusement park to save money for graduate school. Thus begins his summer of discovery, in the tradition of great movies like The Breakfast Club and Dazed and Confused, where he falls in love with the mysterious girl who works nearby him at the park, and gets advice from wise old sage Ryan Reynolds (again, really?) who, though married, has secretly been banging James' girlfriend in his mom's basement (okay, that part is believable).

Adventureland is a sweet story, and it has an excellent 80's-alternative soundtrack, and it could have been an awesome (though not comic) movie were it not for a few essential flaws in the story itself. First, this kid is a college-graduate virgin but he goes to work at the local amusement park and suddenly the ladies love him? And he plans to save money for graduate school tuition in one summer working at a minimum wage job?

Had the writers (who I am too lazy to look up) bothered to ask me, I would have offered them some quick fixes. Make him a high school graduate, saving money for college. The awkwardness, the immaturity-- it just lent itself better to that age. The age gap just completely skews your vision of this kid.

Overall, a good movie, if you're looking for a harmless rental and there's nothing good on TV.

SNEAK IT.


Good Grief: The Dear Zachary Review

I first heard about this documentary when I worked at New York magazine, and the critic there gave it such incredible reviews that when I saw it in Blockbuster a year later (as in tonight), I still remembered it. So I picked it up.

First, let me say this. I am not quite sure what possessed me to rent a movie created by a man in honor of his recently deceased (murdered) best friend, and dedicated to said friend's unborn child who, at the time the movie was conceptualized, was still incubating in the womb of his father's murderer. Yes, that's right folks-- Zachary's mom Shirley killed his dad Andrew, and this film was created by dad's friend Kurt so that Zachary would know all about his father.

The intent of the movie was so sincere, I actually lost my shit a little within the first ten minutes. Or maybe I lost my shit a lot. Kurt describes the loss of a friend so poignantly and so accurately, that I wondered WTF I was thinking when I thought I could handle it. I think that when you're in the club Kurt and I are in, the "I Lost an Amazing Friend Far Too Young, Far Too Soon, About 60 Years Before I Thought I Would Club," there are certain feelings you think are yours alone, and then someone says something and you realize that your feelings aren't unique. We all have those awful, hollow regrets of all the things we never got to do.

"I'll never talk to him again," he says, "He won't dance at my wedding, I'll never get to see him at work. I missed all of the chances to do those things." Ugh, Kurt, ugh. I can identify. I lost my dear friend Maggie in 2007, and there isn't a day that passes that I don't think about her, and about the things I won't get to tell her. Or about the things that she won't tell me. She used to email us every day about what her kids wore to school that day. It's been almost two years since that kind of blessed minutiae filled my life. Her absence is everywhere. Maggie's death couldn't have been more different than Kurt's friend Andrew's, but it seems like grief has some universal qualities.

Kurt goes around the country, to England and to Newfoundland to meet all of the people Andrew touched, and to follow the custody battle for Zachary that is launched by Andrew's amazing parents, Kate and David. What starts out as a personal homage to his friend ends up a movie depiction of a man, a touching letter to his son, an awesome chronicle of his amazing parents and a remarkable profile of the justice system in Canada. They may know about health care, but when it comes to convicting murderers, we got them beat.

The movie box states that the movie takes a turn no one sees coming-- and about halfway through I started thinking that was a dramatic overselling. I was wrong... it does. And it's devastating. I won't give any spoilers, though you may be familiar with the true-life case this movie follows. But I'd advise you be more emotionally stable than me if you're going to rent it.

"Grief is the heart's inability to let go," says one of the grief counselors interviewed in the film, and I found myself crying at the very idea of it. That's exactly how I feel, and now my heart is aching for Kate and David's loss as well.

Dear Zachary is really an excellent film, but it is probably the most horrifyingly sad two hours I have spent in a very long time. In fact, I am up writing this review because I can't sleep. I am too upset by it. I cried and cried and cried for the last twenty minutes of this documentary. So, clearly it was well done, and it was effective. Should you rent it? Yes, but consider yourself warned, unless you have a brick of coal where your heart should be, it's a full-on-heaving-weeper, but worth seeing, especially if you like documentaries.

SEE IT/SNEAK IT.