AFF11 – Somewhere West/Austin High
Chick with the hat that says “Bitch” on it, you look pretty good. Are you single? We’ll talk about it later.
SOMEWHERE WEST (2011)
Directed by: David Marek
Written by: David Marek/Judson Webb/Barrett Ogden/Adam Benn
Ian (Barrett Ogden, looking like Matt Damon with a prison record) is dying of cancer. He goes to the support groups, but he knows that it’s over. There’s no more denying it.
Instead of getting treatments that are going to make his death slower, but more painful, he throws away the false hope and starts driving west from his Upper Peninsula Michigan home. Before he can even get out of town he meets up with Ryan (Judson Webb, Mike Nesmith with the same prison record). Ryan is running from a couple of guys for because of who knows what? And he’s kind of a hopeless drunk.
Ryan tries to start conversations with Ian, but Ian just wants to drive and die on his own without making any more friends. Can Ian learn to love?
The first 30 minutes of this movie were absolutely painful. I hated Ian. Thought he was a total punk with no redeeming qualities. Granted, I’ve never been dying of cancer, so I don’t know what he was going through, but it didn’t help me relate to him at all. (It also didn’t help that, besides being bald, he didn’t look like a cancer patient. He looked like he was still working out fairly regularly. Even the shot of him with his shirt off didn’t make me think anything but “healthy dude.”)
Eventually, though, things started to kind of click. Ian and Ryan started to talk. Ian opened up a little bit to Ryan (in a not so well-acted scene, unfortunately). They met a couple of girls who happened to be traveling the same way. (It did seem like they had no agenda, which is a little weird.) I started to see and understand the beauty of Ian’s trip.
The main reason that I wanted to see this movie is because I’ve taken this trip before. As I said, not because I was dying of cancer, but because I wanted to get away for a while and see the country. To that end, I can see where Ian was coming from. If I found out that I was dying in six months to a year…would I want my last days to be spent in a hospital room? Fuck, no! I would want to go out and do things. See the world.
Unfortunately, Ian was a bit of a prick and didn’t want anyone else with him…at first. When he finally became a human being, the movie started to be watchable.
It certainly helped that the cinematography was beautiful. The Badlands will never be justifiably caught on video (or even film, for that matter), but a percentage of its beauty comes through in this movie. The same can be said of all of the places that the characters visit from the UP to wherever it is that they end up on the West Coast.
It may not be everything that the filmmakers wanted it to be, but it’s still a beautiful film in different ways.
Directed by: Alan Deutsch
Written by: Will Elliott/Kirk C Johnson/Michael S Wilson
Austin, TX is a very unique city. There are those among us who believe that it is one of the greatest cities in the world. There are also those among us who believe that there is a (unfortunately large) faction of people who would like to make it less than great. Those who would like to take the weird out of it. Those who want it to be all about making money and basically turn it into Dallas or worse….LA.
SHUDDER
Luckily, the folks behind Austin High understand what Austin is all about, even if they go about showing it in a REALLY goofy way.
Lady Bird High School is ruled over by Samuel Wilson (writer Michael S Wilson). He rules with a fist that holds a bong. He knows that most of the kids and faculty are high most of the time and he doesn’t really care. As long as no one gets hurt, everything is fine. Hell, he spends most of the day high, too.
That is, until Dr. Patricia Lambert (Melinda Y Cohen) shows up. She’s a prim and proper vice principal who wants everyone to conform. Students, faculty and especially Wilson. Not only is she a threat to the school, but there’s a threat to the very town that we all know and love: Tony Gennocide (Brently Heilbron) wants to turn Austin into a den of non-weirdness. Hippy Hollow? No more nudity! Roads? No more bikers! Stoners? No more stoners!
Will Gennocide and Lambert get Wilson on their side? Will Wilson’s friends understand if they do? More importantly, will his daughter understand? And will she get into the private school that she wants to go to?
Austin High is INCREDIBLY silly. The comedy is over the top and, sometimes, completely random. (Wilson was once an avid falconer. Why? Because it’s funny to watch him stand in his front lawn with a falconer’s glove waiting for a falcon that will never come back.) Some of it is really obvious. (Gennocide is pronounced “gee-no-CHEE-day.” No end of fun is had with that.) It’s also very broad at times. (We see at least three ball sacks.)
The thing is, even though the movie may not deserve four stars…it’s REALLY hard not to like it. It’s a very charming movie in just about every way. You can tell that the folks who made it really fucking love Austin and want it to not stop progressing, but keep what it’s really about in the process of that progress.
Basically, I kind of loved this movie, even with all of its faults. It charmed the pants off of me. It may have done so even if it hadn’t been about my hometown.
(By the way, I kind of want to be Michael S Wilson. Even if he does kind of look like Randy Quaid.)
