|
Better Luck Tomorrow (April 21, 2002)
OK. Hate to be the party pooper here, but this movie just wasn't that
great. First of all, you're probably wondering: "what the heck IS this
movie?" "Better Luck Tomorrow" has yet to be released theatrically,
still making its way around festival circuits and the like. It did
extremely well at Sundance (nominated for Grand Jury Prize), and is
picking up some awesome reviews. So, hey, maybe I'm wrong. MTV just
acquired the flick, and will probably be releasing it some time in the
next year, unless someone actually informs them what a mess this film
is, and how with some rather complicated cutting and maneuvering, it
could in fact be as terrific as it's been tauted.
"Better Luck Tomorrow" is another whack at the high school drama, this
time going back to the reality and seriousness that such American
"dramedy high school" movies as "Say Anything...," "Fast Times at
Ridgemont High," "Risky Business," "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole,"
and such films tried to exude in their crafting of high school
characters, stories, and feelings. Rather than simply digressing to the
most stereotypical cliches, pop music, and worthless subplots, "Better
Luck Tomorrow" does a fine job of creating something that strikes very
close to home. The music is fresh, the actors are pretty damn good, and
the stylization of a more realistic high school scenario series works
wonders for the rather tired genre.
With that said, the film is, once again, a complete mess. Compared to
"Good Fellas," as was the abomination "Menace 2 Society," both films
attempt a certain realism, and truly pull it off in sections
(characters, situations, dialogue for the most part), but neither film
completes the task of creating a full length picture. "Better Luck
Tomorrow" has a few AMAZING sequences that makes one just say, "Damn."
But, there's really nothing tying these vignettes together at all. No
real tension or conflict, except what we have smashed into our face at
various times be it a drug trade, locating a girlfriend's face in a
porno, or dealing with a dead body (the film in fact starts with a dead
hand in the boys' backyard, then flashbacks to how the boys got to this
place, just to keep you going, "Oh, yeah. SOMETHING is eventually going
to happen.")
Now, I like slow and beautiful, realistic films, especially those about
people in my own age group (not to mention a great deal of the film
seemed to be shot in my home area). But, again, this movie lacked a true
coherent structure, and though the filmmakers might state that they
wanted something more "realistic" or "true," and that "real life" has no
structure or whatever, I would simply state that they could still have
had a longrunning tension or at least rise and fall in tension. If the
segments had at least been structured differently, placed in another
order where the feeling of conflict escalated and grew rather than just
simply escalating for a moment and falling down quickly with a simple
solution (the scene in which the boys decide to quit the drug trade is
resolved simply by them suddenly stating, "Hey. Let's stop selling
drugs." "OK.") Eventually, one grows tired and uncomfortable in one's
seat. "HOW MUCH LONGER WILL THIS GO ON?" one asks. And just as soon as
you think the movie is finally coming to a close, an entirely new plot
point or character situation develops. It becomes quite tedious towards
the end.
I appreciate what the filmmakers were trying to do in this picture, but
just feel as though they could have done something much better. They
needed to spend A LOT more time on a script that falls flat for the most
part, and resolves so easily, without any true closure that we are left
simply with a raising crane shot of two characters driving off into the
sunset with a word definition across the screen, encapsulating the
entire film's plot as "tangled, disconnected, complicated, etc." It's as
though the filmmakers KNEW that their plot was totally disjointed and
rather than giving the script another revision, just gave up with a
simple ending. Again, I understand and appreciate the fact that the
filmmakers might state, "Hey. That's how life is. Sometimes it ends
simply without closure," but I still feel as though 1) They did not
build to this ending, 2) Just because you SAY it's a bad ending in your
ending, doesn't give you the right to have a bad ending. That's just
being lazy.
Other more minimal complaints include the fact that though the boys in
the film acted rather well, they were all FAR too old looking and
"pretty" for who they were, the main character was the most passive
character I've seen in many years (he never does anything for himself...
the quiet pushed-around character works sometimes, but not in this
film), and the way certain more serious subjects such as murder were
dealt with was rather insulting. There was never any true feeling or
emotion, and it's obvious that the screenwriters really don't grasp the
concepts that they were dealing with in many situations. Certain logic
problems arose, as well, and again my only thought is laziness on the
part of the screenwriters. The scene that most aptly comes to mind is
one in which a "rich kid" (in suburbia Orange County... surprise
surprise) decides to rob his parents, even though he has everything he
wants. WHY does he want to rob his parents? Well, he won't say, but if
you ask him, he'll either yell at you or explicate plainly, "I want to
grant them a wake-up call," whatever the hell THAT means.
The brilliance of John Cassavetes is that he accomplishes what these
filmmakers tried so thoroughly to do: a world of reality so bleak and
sincere that it's almost a documentary... but Cassavetes still had story
development, character development, a rise and fall in tension, and the
disjointed sequences were always easily linked by a common theme,
emotion, and true knowledge of what was transpiring. This film was
simply a series of such situations without care to the overall linear
emotional line, and thus became quite dull.
The film could have been saved in the very least by a simple solution:
the main character should have had a tangible conflict in the
beginning... perhaps he couldn't complete a free-response question about
"who he is" (or something less cliche) on a college application... but
could complete it by the end of the flick now that he's "gone through
the adventures of the underground of suburbia." (Oh, that reminds me:
regardless of if the filmmakers were in fact aware of it or not, they
needed to allow the audience to know that they understood these kids
were ALL rich kids... that's the comedy, that's the inner conflict
between the "richest" rich kids and the not-so-rich kids... because,
after all, life in places not OC can be a LITTLE bit more difficult than
this... we're not going to empathize with a bunch of rich bitches who
get away with everything always just because how great they are).
|
|
|
