Dispatches from SXSW Film Festival #2

Eric D. Snider March 15, 2009

I’m impressed with the two Narrative Feature competition films I’ve seen so far at South By Southwest, Bomber and True Adolescents. Neither is what you’d call groundbreaking — their plot summaries sound depressingly familiar — yet there is creativity in the way they approach their well-worn paths.

Bomber is a British film about an elderly couple who set out with their thirtysomething son on a road trip to Germany. The father has reasons for wanting to visit a particular village; the son is frustrated by having to ditch his demanding girlfriend in order to chaperone his doddering parents; and the mother only wants to stop at dotty museums and 150-year-old shoe shops. Long-simmering resentments boil up, and each member of the family must find new ways of communicating with the other two.

I know, right? It doesn’t sound like much. But writer/director Paul Cotter finds new angles from which to approach the subject matter, with a funny, insightful screenplay and solid leading performances. There are complicated emotions involved here, and the movie refuses to take the easy way out. I hope the film finds U.S. distribution (SXSW is its world premiere), because I think audiences will like it if they can find it.

True Adolescents is a little more familiar and a little less great, but still a worthwhile endeavor. It stars Mark Duplass (The Puffy Chair, Humpday) as a 34-year-old layabout who takes his 14-year-old cousin and the cousin’s buddy on a camping trip. I believe this is the one-thousandth film I’ve seen about an overgrown man-child who doesn’t know what to do with his life, but it’s only about the five-hundredth one to star Mark Duplass — who, dammit, is really, really likable, charming, and funny. He elevates the film immensely, and his two gawky teenage co-stars, Bret Loehr and Carr Thompson, show some promise. Like I said, it’s familiar territory, but it’s a well-made example of it.

My second day at SXSW also included Best Worst Movie, an energetic and entertaining documentary about the Troll 2 phenomenon — i.e., the fact that this terrible, terrible movie has developed such a strong cult following. If you weren’t aware that this was happening, make no mistake, people aren’t defending it. On the contrary, they love it because it’s awful. It’s awful in highly amusing ways. And it screens frequently to packed audiences all around the country, with newbies emerging eager to share the film’s magical ineptitude with their friends.

Best Worst Movie takes us behind the scenes of the cult following, and of the movie itself, which was shot in 1990 in Utah, went straight to video, and then got into regular rotation on HBO. The doc was made by one of its stars, Michael Stephenson, who was a young boy when he appeared in the film. He and most of the rest of the cast now view it with a mixture of embarrassment and bemusement, and they’ve gotten a kick out of traveling the country to attend special screenings of it. They get that it’s a lousy movie — no one knows that better than they do — and they don’t mind being the objects of ironic affection.

The insanity behind the film’s production (it was written and directed by an Italian couple who don’t speak English and who still believe they made a high-quality picture), plus the modern-day appreciation for it, makes for a funny and engaging documentary, even if you haven’t seen Troll 2 yourself. And if you haven’t, that’s a situation you should remedy at the earliest available opportunity.

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Eric D. Snider (website) is in Austin for South By Southwest all week. Check back for more updates.