Buck Naked Arson (2001) User Reviews

3 stars

[mweston · 7/10 · 18 April 2002]

Four teenagers who just graduated from high school decide to spend the night in a forest. A fire starts, and the authorities take all of them in for questioning. Each of them is questioned in turn, and we see the night unfold four times on screen, once from each perspective.

The eventual answer to the question of who started the fire is unexpected, there is good humor throughout, and in general this turned out to be a sweeter story that I had expected based on the title and the description. The acting seemed merely acceptable, however, and the ending was unfortunately a little too Hollywood. Seen at Cinequest (the San Jose, CA film festival) on 2/23/2002.

Well, it's not exactly Citizen Kane, but it's a good way to spend an hour and a half.

[sansmerci · 3 September 2004]

Starts out with a teenage boy running around naked in the woods in the midst of a forest fire. An overzealous forest ranger, who loses his big pay bonus and vacation because of the fire in his forest is determined to find out which of the four teens did it and send the right one to jail. In his interrogation, the full story of the night comes out about these kids' graduation night and the relationships between them.

Interesting concept for a film. A very typical story of self realization, love and growing up, but done from a rather different plot set up. The film is very funny, which might disappoint those who looked at the posters and the video case which suggest that this is some sort of horror or action film. Still, despite some misleading advertising, the writing is very funny and realistic. The characters are believable as teenagers, and the conversations actually make sense.

It's also a great film for anyone who grew up on ABC family comedies, as most of the cast seems to have been pulled from those old shows. I rented the movie because I was curious to see a movie from Rider Strong, former co-star from the ABC show Boy Meets World. I was not aware, however, that the film also featured Rider's older brother Shiloh (seriously, who names their kids Rider and Shiloh?), William Russ, the father from Boy Meets World, and Christine Lakin from Step by Step. These actors prove that they are capable of more than just the cheesy melodrama of the sitcoms they grew up on. Granted, there were quite a few melodramatic scenes in this film, but they still showed that they could shine in something more mature and adult. I personally didn't even recognize Lakin until half way through the film (although this might have had something to do with the fact that I watched her grow up as a tomboy on TV and, in this film, she plays more of a "perfect little princess" type girl).

There are definitely flaws in this film. It does get a little melodramatic, as I've said before, and the camera keeps doing this annoying tilt thing that I'm assuming the director thought would make this look like a crime film or something, but it really just looked dumb. It's certainly not some sort of great cinematic achievement, but it's also not a waste of your time or money. Rent it, watch it, it is certainly a good time.

Only you can prevent watching crappy films about forest fires

[movieman_kev · 1/10 · 21 September 2005]

Much more akin to "Dawson's Creek" than anything close to "the Breakfast Club (that plot outline is way off about that). The film start's off no doubt pleasing the coveted "Dawson's Creek" demographic of gay men and younger teen girls by having Rider Strong (Boy Meets World) running around butt naked. Not the greatest start for a straight guy, but I was willing to give it a chance. Silly me, I thought it was gonna get better. Nope, not at all. This craptastic 'she wants him, he wants another girl who's dating another guy who she doesn't want' melodramatic load' independent film about a super small forest fire and a forest ranger (William Russ of "Boy meets World" again) trying to find out who did it, is so asinine that I hated myself for watching what, for all intents and purposes, should have been an ABC after school special.

My Grade: F

Where I saw it: Starz on Demand (available until September 22nd, 2005)

I Didn't Start the Fire (Spoilers)

[scooterbrowne · 8/10 · 31 July 2004]

I've wanted to see this movie since I first heard about it back in 2001 and once I did I enjoyed it. This has on of my favorite actresses in it, the lovely Christine Lakin, from Step By Step. Also Rider Strong and William Russ, both from Boy Meets World, star in this movie. The movie was produced by Rider's own production company.

The movie takes place in the woods where 4 high school teens spend their Prom night together. During the night a fire breaks out in the woods and the four of them are suspects for arson. The forest ranger (Russ)takes the 4 teens in to question them but none of their stories are the same. So the question remains who started the fire.

Christine's character, Becca is an aspiring actress who is dating Grant (Shiloh Strong). Grant wants to marry her but she has other ideas. Willy (Rider) has some issues in his like that he has to deal with but he prefers to bottle them up inside and deal with them through song. Janey (Azura Skye) is in love with Willy and she goes to the woods to seduce him.

The movie was very well done and shows that child actors can succeed in Hollywood if given the chance. If you are a fan of any of these people or a fan of SBS or BMW (not the car. HAHA) then you should check this out. The premise was solid and the story didn't bore me. Taking into consideration that this was a low budget movie, with a young cast, and basically and independent film, this movie was done very well. I'd give it an 8/10.

Fun and Interesting

[chrissyelizabeth-14563 · 10/10 · 27 February 2020]

This is a fun movie with a solid mystery. The fact that the story is told several times from different perspectives makes it hard to know who the real culprit is in the end. Pretty much the only one you can rule out from the beginning is Willy(Rider Strong) because he is a diabetic who basically spends the whole movie with low blood sugar moments away from passing out and thus is pretty out of it for a major portion of the story, until he actually passes out from blood sugar issues. He is also so busy thinking about what is going on at home that he's to distracted by his worry for his mother to really do anything at all.They also go out of their way to convince you that his friends think he's not smart or capable enough to get away with anything, that it's clear he isn't responsible.So this was fun and seeing Rider Strong act alongside his real life brother because even though they weren't playing brothers you could see a genuine palpable connection between the two. (Side-note:Why the hell if he knew his health issues did Willy not bring some kind of snack along on the trip,or alternatively why did his friends not pay attention to the fact that there was clearly something wrong with him and try to help him out,I mean he was asking about getting food or talking about food at least every five minutes and no one seemed to get the hint that there might be something seriously wrong with their friend.)

With such a title, how could you go wrong? Well, you could.

[vagabondjonson · 11 March 2007]

OK, I had a bachelor party wherein we went to the video store and had a competition to find the movie with the most intriguingly bad title. We had a winner with this movie. The anticipation was huge. A title like "Buck Naked Arson" carries a bag of possibilities with it, but unfortunately one of the possibilities is a movie that pays no attention to the title and ends up being a coming of age drama about teenagers who go out into the woods and talk about their feelings. Needless to say this did not particularly intrigue the goers at my bachelor party. If you see it in the movie store, do stop to marvel at the title, and then move on.