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TapeHead Reviews: Angst
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While in Cannes this year I managed to watch 9 movies in a short period of 5 days. While there were thousands of films playing, my time was limited, so I had to pick and choose wisely. All in all, I did a pretty damn good job picking films based on personal recommendations or that I had some prior knowledge of. Then there is <I>Angst</I>. The biggest suprise of the festival for me, personally, because a) I had never heard of it, b) it's a romantic comedy, and c) it was a romantic comedy that was actually really good!
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<I>Whoah, horrorboy</I>, you're saying to yourself, <I>you went to a ramantic comedy and you liked it?</I>. Yes. Absolutely. I know, romantic comedies aren't usually the favored genre of the TapeHead staff, but this Australian production (due to be released in there in July) is an exception.
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Let me explain: Here in the U.S., romantic comedies are teenage affairs that invariably star some genetically impossible twenty-something actors like <B>Jennifer Love Hewitt</B> or <B>Freddy Prinze Jr.</B> who portray <I>teenagers</I> despite the fact that they're pushing thirty. Or the films take a hottie like <B>Rachel Leigh Cook</B> and then expect the viewer to think she's an ugly duckling because she's wearing glasses. In other words, intelligence-insulting pap for the pre-teen crowd. Most of these flicks are operating in a dream world where things are never too bad before they become great at the film's conclusion. At least <B>John Hughes</B> would let his characters hit extreme lows before finding the love or meaning in life that they're looking for - this is why they were successful. You were happy when <B>Eric Stolz</B> finally hooks up with <B>Mary Stuart Masterson</B> because he had to travel a hard road to get there.
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<I>Angst</I>, like the aforementioned flicks, is about longing for love and longing for meaning in life. What separates it from the pack is the fact that it's not about high schoolers, but post-college kids. And, also unlike its American counterparts, these guys (although they ARE stoners) aren't a buch of shit-talking "slackers" like the ones who populate our twenty-something films.
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Not only that, but for once in the history of film, the "funny wierd guy" (you know, like Chainsaw and Dave from <I>Summer School</I> or Randy from the <I>Scream</I> series) gets to be the main character!
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<B>Sam Lewis</B> is Dean, a twenty-something King's Cross kid who works at the local video store. But he's got dreams. Big dreams of making the ultimate zombie flick - the zombie movie to end all zombie movies (to star <B>Bruce Campbell</B> and to be directed by <B>John Carpenter</B>)! What stands in Dean's way is the same thing that stands in the way of all folks at this tender stage in life: inability to move beyond the expectations about what you should be doing. The fact that his lamented ex-girlfriend has just gotten engaged isn't doing anything to improve his state of mind, either.
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Dean lives in a squalid flat with his mates Jade (who also happens to be another ex-grilfriend) and Ian, a wanna-be standup comedian who works in the local porn store. Just when things begin to feel like they're going to never look up for Dean and co, along come two new characters to throw their lives into chaos: street kid Mole (introduced when he gets knocked out cold by a gint dildo in a failed porno store robbery) and hot Goth chick May (<B>Abi Tucker</B>), a new member of Dean's video store.
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In between bouts of trying to find their stolen VCR (the worst thing that could ever happen - ever) and failed internet dating, Dean and his crew end up coming out ahead, as they should.
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