This movie is gay. Which could be a positive statement if your taste in film runs that way. Why should you be unaware that this movie contains a scene of two guys kissing. The marketing may miss you as an audience.
Or, the general viewer is going to play this movie somewhere public or with friends or family and when their eyes are glazing over and they are checking the clock they are watching two ostensibly heterosexual men kissing and there is a montage intended as erotic which will induce either unintentional laughter or gross-out noises. The lead character is one thing and then another, and it seems to be just because the writers decided to go there.
Nothing is being proposed or denied by him and no rifle is on the mantle at the beginning of act 1 that might be fired by the end of act 2. A guy loses track of a woman he has already slept with and he doesn't find her, gets drunk and goes home to crash and ends up with his male friend. Maybe there is a precedent for this happening in life, but as a movie it falls flat and almost certainly will be a turn-off to anyone investing their time in this loose mix of concert-filler.
I expect a fan of the band will see my negative comment and rate it unhelpful on that basis. A fan of Broken Social Scene might want to support the film on that basis, and not much can be done about that.
A young man wakes up to realize he has slept with a female friend he has wanted as long as he can remember, a gift on the eve of her flight to Europe and a new life there. So the usual movie goal of consummating the great love is done. His goal now? Who cares? It plays to me as if he wants to cajole her into staying in Toronto with him forever in a neo-slacker mediocrity. That seems to be all we can project onto his intentions. He and his male buddy intend to bring the girl to a free concert of her favourite band Broken Social Scene which may have some impact on her or may be a big event they can share -- as if the off screen love making weren't enough.
Broken Social Scene provided music for The Tracy Fragments, another Bruce McDonald film in which function stumbles over form. I like McDonald and he is a genial bohemian figure that inspires young filmmakers, but with this movie I don't know what I'm getting and my main reaction to it was restlessness and boredom.
If I don't know the characters, I should know at least what they represent or have an emotional handle on their needs and wants, but in the case of the protagonist his very nature can flip-flop on the justification of a remark about the band and music being "unpredictable." Much is made of how "amazing" the concert is and it is perfectly generic. The coverage of the concert may surely be less exciting than being there, as is the case with most concerts. If someone is watching video of the concert and loving it, the impact is much the same as watching anyone watch something they love that you don't get.
I'd like to have posted this without a spoiler warning, because it isn't the comment spoiling the movie it's the writers of the script. If a lesbian character ends up with a guy, there's an uproar. If a gay man ends up in love with a woman, there'd be protest. Those stories would be attacked as myths. And yet, there is acceptance of this character jumping track on a whim (supposedly drunk) from straight to gay. It is played off as no big deal, which will only really be amusing to an audience for whom gay issues are uppermost. Otherwise it's just another shade of boring, and with an added ingredient of possibly embarrassment.
Not much story. The concert fills most of the running time. The woman or would-be love object has her wanderings through old haunts on her last night in town, and this is I suppose another great way to gather filler footage. She returns to look at some concert video the protagonist shot. Like a cozy evocation of their true relationship - friends. The ending montage of childhood shots relies on the principle that black and white or grainy means emotive. Another chance to use up some of the bands music over end credits.
If you are a rabid fan of Broken Social Scene, you might only care that it is a document of the free concert. Mind you, a document that veers away and distorts the music to background noise occasionally and that you are not getting the whole thing. If there is a CD of just the music or just the concert coverage, that might be a better purchase.
If you are not a fan of the music, you have seen party videos of your friends that are more entertaining.
If you are a Bruce McDonald fan, see Road Kill again, or Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, or it's criminally short-lived series The Rez or another series Twitch City is in DVD. Pontypool is a gripping and focused, thoughtful and intense movie generally about surviving from zombies and perhaps his best work. Hard Core Logo has a lot of amusing stuff too. This Movie is Broken has none of the charm or balls of the above. Arguably, the man-on-man twist is a risk but not one that can pay off well when it has to be hidden as a spoiler or just annoy the casual viewer.
5 out of 13 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
