Ham on Rye (2019) User Reviews

should I stay or should I go?

[ferguson-6 · 7/10 · 10 June 2019]

Oak Cliff Film Festival 2019 Greetings again from the darkness. Should I stay or should I go? Only it's not really your choice. Some bizarre ritual, or rite of passage (or no passage), is held to determine whether one is selected to venture into the world, or instead resigned to remaining a local forever.

We first see the teens clumped in their cliques, nervous energy palpable on the screen. Anxiety is prevalent but we aren't exactly sure why. Slowly each of the young folks makes their way to Monty's Deli - only, contrary to the title, it's not for the ham on rye. The typical awkward teenage social event is underway, only there is more at stake here than who will dance with who.

Director and writer Tyler Taormina and co-writer Eric Berger have delivered a scathing commentary not just on the suburbs, but of the realities faced by high schoolers all over. In every home town, some kids head off to college or off into the world in some other manner, while another group gets "left behind". What follows is a gap or void between those who leave and those who remain. In the film, the void even exists within families.

The film opens and closes with sequences in the community park. Young kids are quite normal - running, jumping and laughing. The older adults seem to be merely existing. There is an almost supernatural approach here by the filmmaker, but it does beg the question ... how much control do we have over our fate at that age, and are we accepting of our lot? Pretty interesting fodder for discussion.

A terrifying way to grow up

[jon_pratt12345 · 7/10 · 27 February 2021]

This film seems mostly to be about the disappointment of getting older. The first half of the film is sureal and magical, it was also quite funny with bizarre existential questions being thrown around but never answered; I guess the subtext is: you don't need answer them because you're young. The second half of the film seems to be about the inevitable unfulfilled expectations and the loss of connection with people who have taken a different life path to you. Overall the first half is more enjoyable to watch and the second half is incredibly slow and down beat however, I think it leaves you feeling exactly what the film makers intended.

Nostalgic and Serene

[Tinaquinnen-481-314905 · 6/10 · 19 January 2021]

A very nice film, I enjoyed the pace and tone of this movie and it's just what I expected from first viewing! I don't know why it's got all the low scores but it made me think about how weird growing up is... and the absurdity of leaving your hometown or being left there while everyone else moved on. I loved the jaggered lynch tone and just the feel of the movie, would watch again.

Trapped in the Fish Tank

[ReadingFilm · 3 April 2019]

There is an air of unrest and subversion across it. It feels entirely new. When the girls speak about the wonders of getting older, the film vows to prove them wrong. Through Deuter's music it ramps up as a german fairytale. The entitlement such as going into strangers homes or being the powers to decide on boys fates shows it's about privilege, especially choosing who was worthy of ascension. She seemed to find it cruel and immoral. The film is sometimes 50s, sometimes 80s, sometimes today, or all at once. Same as how it shows multiple generations in relation to the event: the children lively and innocent. the teens nervous and bracing for it. the older kids lost and dazed. the old, zombies and shells. The event seems to allow the squares lucky to be chosen to disappear away into some orgy of paradise. It becomes metaphysical, not horror, or almost a quotation or subversion of horror. These scenes of openness in the park, the searching, being scoped out somehow to me feels as these eerie metaphysical horror films popular in the art house where 'It' is always near. Or it captures the heightened psychology of horror without the areas of fear. Look at the rocker guy viewed from afar, which was one of its powerful moments. In standard films he would be eaten one scene later by The Thing. Then, I could not not think of Vietnam and PTSD with the older kids. Were they never chosen and doomed to be there? There is a vacuum and divide between the chosen and not. Maybe why the phone message cuts out and why the father couldn't see him in college. Why the girls messages weren't received. It is some metaphysical fish tank of those inside versus outside. It would be the ones with means ascending society's ranks, the others without privilege left to rot. The funniest part of the film is how lame old people are in it, they are these pathetic dullards. There is also an ingenuity here for low budget that its emotional climax revolves around a balloon. That it is so gentle, simple, but startling of an image. The high concept creates an infinite budget by showing plain things with enormous implications. When going in I had expected a school dance comedy, that Tamberelli would be partying and rioting, Lori-Beth would be up to some wild sh-t, as the beginning seemed to promised in its notes and breadth. But these icons of Nickelodeon are there in trances and dazes in a purgatory awaiting the 'All That' reunion. I don't blame her for escaping the event as I would have done the same in order to mount a revolution from within.

Linklater on Lynch :)))

[raresd-97193 · 6/10 · 11 February 2021]

I loved the half that looks and feels like a Richard Linklater film, but the David Lynch half got a bit annoying and was a bit tiresome. That must be so due to the fact that I adore Linklater while Lynch never really worked for me. All in all, by the end it started to hurt.

David Lynch-ian?

[movieman-227 · 5/10 · 11 December 2020]

While dotted with isolated moments of remarkable beauty and emotional acuity, the film mostly plays like an attempt at another "Myth of the American Sleepover" (David Robert Mitchell's wonderful 2010 debut), albeit one heavily influenced by the work of David Lynch. It's a difficult film to "get into," but I was ultimately moved by its dreamy, elliptical opacity. I'm just not sure whether it really adds up to a coherent work.

One of my secret indie favorites!

[arielb88 · 7/10 · 3 April 2022]

Ham On Rye flew right under the radar and it's such a shame! This film deserves a lot more press than it got. It reminds me of the same sort of thrill I got when i first discovered "Mulholland Drive", back when it was more indie and Naomi Watts wasn't yet, well, "Naomi Watts".

This is a film for a pretty niche audience, but for those it was made for, boy will you be happy you found it. Very obscure, oddball, muted acid-trip type of cinema. You will know this film in a couple of years as memes from it make their way around social media. If you're in the mood for something weird and a bit of a mind-bend, put this on!

Worse than 1 atar.

[harmonbarbandrich · 1/10 · 27 April 2021]

A complete waste of time. Disjointed, loaded with obscure symbolism, uninteresting plot, unlikable characters. We'd hoped for more, but we received a lot less.

Isolation at pivotal ages

[pharmacynical · 10/10 · 3 July 2022]

This is how it feels for anyone whose life is derailed and is forced to omit crucial rites of passage. There's this overwhelming fear that you'll be a townie irreversibly if you take a year off before going to college and everyone seems to vanish. This movie summarizes that feeling perfectly.

WDF

[MikeyB1793 · 2/10 · 16 December 2021]

I enjoyed the first 20 minutes of this film - sort of - there was an atmosphere.

I was hoping for a certain growth of character development and some semblance of a story.

There was NONE.

An 'indie' classic.

[MOscarbradley · 9/10 · 5 February 2021]

This small gem of an 'indie' movie has 'indie classic' written all over it. Opening on one of those American summers we all wish we could have lived through Tyler Taormina's "Ham on Rye" is a film that, in its first five minutes, could go any way. A Sofia Coppola "Virgin Suicides" rip-off? Surely not. Another gross-out teen comedy? No, these teens are too well-scrubbed, their parents perhaps just a little too off-the-wall. Come to think of it, everyone we meet in the first five minutes is just a little too off-the-wall. Is this a horror movie? Is Michael Myers lurking in the sunshine?

Perhaps it's that uncertainty demonstrated in the first five minutes that makes this the kind of movie you know you're going to treasure and if there's a precedent maybe it's the early films of Richard Linklater or something David Lynch might have made when he was sixteen, (as it progresses it certainly drifts off into Lynchian surrealism). There's no plot and the lack of 'action' is bound to alienate even its potential audience, teens of a certain age. Cineastes, however, will have a field-day with the onscreen images conjuring memories of other films as well as, hopefully, their own teenage years when doing nothing actually felt like doing something, (and there's an awful lot of doing nothing here). It's a young person's movie for sure and you could say Tyler Taormina has definitely arrived. i loved every bizarre moment.

What the Hell was that?

[Speekeezy · 1/10 · 18 August 2021]

Was this supposed to become a cult classic? All ten reviews -- including this one -- attest that it didn't. And won't. The first rule of writing is, if you're going to do boring, don't do it boringly. I tend to think I can get something out of just about any film: If it isn't enjoyable, one way or another, well at least I can enjoy mocking it, This isn't even mock-worthy.

Nothing much happens...skip it

[goods116 · 4/10 · 12 January 2021]

The first 20 minutes teens are pretty much just walking on the street. Very little dialogue. Sets the tone for a move where...not much happens.

A Delirious Fever Dream From a Parallel Universe and the Decay of the Human Spirit!

[michaeltvrba · 10/10 · 26 July 2023]

There's so very much I could say about this film. This is one of those movies where it pains me to know that it's existed for the last few years and yet I only discovered it within the past week.

I discovered this film by accident after randomly stumbling across a film reviewer on tiktok discussing this and Tyler's more recent movie "Happer's Comet."

First, i think it's fair to say that viewers looking for a cohesive straight forward story will not find one here. I mean, it's there, to an extent. This movie presents it's story through a montage of it's nervous, excited, anxious, and awkward characters.

Ham on Rye is almost more of a mood than a story. It's the way that it's presented to us that reveals a little more of the fascinating town and it's bizarre past-time with each passing frame and shot that makes it so interesting. Everything feels familiar but slightly...off. It's kind of a similar feel to the uncanny valley effect. You recognize what you're seeing, and the story being told, but some part of your brain just isn't 100% sure that you're processing what you're seeing correctly. It's like a dream.

I'm not going to divulge too much of the actual plot points because to do so would be to spoil the curious almost supernatural phenomenon that is at the core of it.

I've seen people break down the movie into two halves. The first half being an almost "Dazed and Confused" or "the Breakfast Club" styled story. The one we've all seen. It's a bunch of awkward kids at an awkward part of their life and school is coming to an end. BUT then we get thrown into the second half. The "Lynchian" half. It's like day and night. The sun and the moon. The excitement and nervousness from the first half are gone and replaced with something much darker.

"The decay of the human spirit" as it is referred to in Ham On Rye's official synopsis.

There is a very real very dark aching that sleeps within the second half of the movie. It plays to the film's dreamlike nature as well as the first half does but in a different way. The darkness and emptiness of the town in the film's later moments feel claustrophobic. Like it's somewhere you wouldn't want to be stuck forever. And considering the character's final fates by the end of the film that's probably intentional.

Overall Ham on Rye is phenomenal. It's a brilliant debut from a filmmaker with a very unique voice and I hope to see more from him.

On a final note Carson Lund's cinematography in this film is nothing short of jaw dropping.