HALF COCKED
A film review by Will FitzHugh
Copyright 1996 Will FitzHugh
A cute, bored, existentialist teenager from Louisville, Kentucky steals her brother's van full of band equipment and takes four friends on a pathetic and funny trip across middle America. Give the average punker $1000 and cheap B&W movie camera and you'd probably do a lot worse than this. The only recognizable face is Ian Svenonius, lead singer for Nation of Ulysses, who's finally reaping the benefits of being named Sassy Magazine's Mr. Sassy a couple of years ago. Will he be the next Henry Rollins? We can only hope.
Anyway, this veers from funny to boring to sad, but mostly funny. They play a few gigs despite not knowing how to even set up the drum kit. Shit, that's probably how Green Day got started. They suck, but if you suck enough, you run the risk of being considered cool. One show ends with the singer throwing bottles into a trash can as the drummer reaches crescendo after crescendo.
There are pieces of Linklater's 'Slacker' and some ideas from Jarmusch's earlier work; it's almost 'Louisville Cowboys Go America'. I wonder if the plot of the movie unfolded as a parallel of the making of the picture; did Suki Hawley steal a van full of movie-making equipment out of boredom and run off with her friends filming whatever scared and amused them? Probably not, but that's what it feels like.
This will probably invite comparisons to 'Clerks', but I doubt Hawley's next movie will star Shannen Doherty and be featured on Entertainment Tonight. I'm guessing it'll be better, too...
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