Final Review - 50/50 (2011)

50/50 is something that you don’t see very often: a movie that’s almost entirely predictable, yet completely honest and original.  Let’s be frank: it’s a heartwarming comedy-drama based on a true story of a young guy’s struggle with cancer.  How do you think it ends?  The fascinating thing about 50/50 though, is that it doesn’t matter.

This is also probably the first movie in history that is entirely about cancer (not counting documentaries).  Many plots have centered around the impact of a life-threatening disease: Royal Tenenbaums, Bucket List, Funny People, and everything Nicholas Sparks has ever written.  But this is the first time that a movie has, in itself, tried to completely represent the experience of having cancer.  There is, of course, plenty of drama going on around the cancer, involving the friends and family of the protagonist, Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  But we rarely, if ever, see these people on their own, apart from him.  We follow behind Adam’s shoulder through the whole movie, because the movie isn’t really about his social life.  It’s about the cancer.  If you were asked to describe the plot of this movie, you wouldn’t say, “it’s about a guy with an overbearing mom”, or, “it’s about two best friends living together.”  You would describe it with one word: “cancer.”  If you had to describe the overall theme behind the movie, it would be “cancer.”  And years from now, if someone were to ask you, “hey, what was the name of that one cancer movie?”, it’s probably a safe bet that 50/50 will still be the only response.

Not only is this movie based on a true story, one of the most crucial people in that story has a starring role as himself.  Seth Rogen’s friend, Will Reiser, was the one who came face-to-face with the silent killer in real life, and he took the liberty of writing one hell of a screenplay about it.  The plot requires nearly no explanation: after complaining of back pain, the protagonist learns from a doctor with an ice-cold demeanor that he has an extremely rare form of spinal cancer, a freak chance of genetics (as Adam himself says, “I don’t smoke, I don’t drink... I recycle.”)  How accurately Adam’s experience mirror’s Reiser’s own is irrelevant; what matters is that he created a brilliantly human story, from a subject that could have all-too-easily slid into a trap of heavy-handedness and saccharine.

Seth Rogen, as mentioned, plays himself, as “Kyle”, Adam’s roommate.  A friend once said of Seth Rogen’s career, “No Acting Required.”  And though this seems like it would be more true for this movie than anything, he poured his heart into this movie in a way that had yet to be seen, and may not be seen again, in any of his films.  Of course, Seth’s presence immediately demands comparison to all the other participants in the wave of “heartfelt-but-R-rated” comedies that Judd Apatow kicked up when he made 40-Year-Old Virgin all those years ago.  But this movie isn’t quite like Knocked Up, or even Superbad, another film lifted from Rogen’s real-life experiences.  Somehow, the dialogue in this movie sounds like real people having real conversations, instead of a bunch of comedy actors improvising pop-culture analogies.

However, Rogen isn’t the only one who acts the hell out of this movie.  You may have already heard plenty of buzz about Anjelica Huston’s role as the aforementioned overprotective mother.  Bryce Dallas Howard fits right in to her role as Adam’s girlfriend, a girl with even more problems than the mom.  And Anna Kendrick proves, in the wake of Up In The Air, that she is more than a one-trick pony.  Her role is especially crucial, as she provides another example of how the movie manages to subvert its own predictability.  Her character, the “psychiatrist with her own set of issues to work out”, has of course been done to death, but she makes her book-smart, socially-dumb awkwardness believable and real.

That’s the strength of this movie: it does for human interaction what countless “indie” movie have tried and failed to do over the past decade.  Unlike “Juno”, or the previous Apatow comedies, it refuses to drown in its own quirkiness.  Nothing in this movie is a quirk for quirk’s sake, and because the creators have abandoned this barrier between the audience and the movie, we feel what we are supposed to feel as an audience.  Even though the subject matter presumes itself to be dead-serious from the beginning, it never insists on us, never forces us to feel something, never becomes “cancer just for the sake of cancer.”  And if you’re now worried that you won’t be able to make it through this one without a good supply of Kleenex, rest assured, it is still a comedy at heart.  And it’s funny.  Not only is it funny, it’s naturally funny: we don’t need a clearly-stated punchline and pause to understand when we’re supposed to laugh in this movie.  Two of the best comedic roles in the movie go to Matt Frewer and Philip Baker Hall (The latter is one of those character actors that you’ve seen a million times but just can’t place.  He was the guy in Boogie Nights who convinced Burt Reynolds to switch to videotape.)  The pair plays a couple of old dogs who Adam meets through his chemo treatment, and turn Adam on to the benefits of medical Marijuana, in addition to providing an uplifting perspective.  Seth Rogen, as mentioned, turns in possibly the best performance of his career, so it goes without saying that most of the laughs come from him.  The amazing thing is how he is able to make us laugh even during one of the most emotional scenes (without spoiling anything, the scene is about 1/3rd of the way in... you’ll know it when you see it.)  But the bulk of the praise has to go to Mr. Gordon-Levitt.  He’s the reason that this movie is able to get so up-close and personal with cancer.  His Adam is heartbreakingly familiar, a guy you could swear you’ve known all your life.  But no matter who you identify with most, see this movie.  If anything ever deserved an Oscar, this is it.

Three Favorites: Book, Album, Movie

Book - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

Great, great book.  Plenty has been said about this book already, but in today’s age of 4chan and Anonymous, it’s important to give respect to the original troll.  Hunter S. Thompson just absolutely did not give one single fuck.  It’s not even a story about drugs.  Yes, it’s amazing that he can get away with being on so many throughout the entire ordeal, but really, its about how well he is able to manipulate society, despite the fact that by anyone’s call, he fits the exact description of a social outcast.

Maybe that’s why he can get away with so much; people pay just enough attention to him to allow him what he wants, and not quite enough to realize just how reckless he really is.  He plays off the assumptions of everybody around him, mingling casually and amicably with such sworn enemies as hotel managers, cops, and car salesmen.  Many people have seen the movie, and it’s still great, but certain scenes simply can’t do the book justice.  For example, the part in which he gets pulled over is elaborated on much further, offering a deeper glimpse into exactly how he is able to talk his way out of it.  And the cop does not, in fact, ask him for a kiss at the end of the encounter: that was probably added because the cop was played by Gary Busey.  Another great scene in which Hunter pretends to be a cop in front of several officers visiting the police convention, was omitted from the movie.  It is the little moments like this that offer a true glimpse into his mind, and give the book far more personality than the movie could ever have.  A must-read classic, even for squares.

Album - Bringin’ It All Back Home:

This album was from Bob Dylan’s transitional period.  He was making a big shift in style, both by moving from acoustic to electric, and changing his lyrics from emotionally-charged folk ballads to surreal, absurdist, rapid-fire beat poetry.  It also marked a major shift in his fan base; some of whom deserted and dismissed him as a “Judas”, others who had never been able to get into his music before he plugged in.  “Bringin’ It All Back Home” is a perfect freeze-frame of this period, down to the fact that only the first side of the album is electric; the other remains acoustic.  This album also houses what Hunter S. Thompson considered to be his greatest song, “Mr. Tambourine Man”, as well as what this reviewer considers to be (arguably) his greatest song, “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding.”  Both of these are found on the acoustic side, but the electric side has its shining stars as well.  “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Maggie’s Farm” both require no further praise, as well as the trippy, Carrollesque, often-overlooked “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream.”  Of course, it’s impossible to pick a favorite Dylan album.  “Times They Are A-Changin’” and “The Freewheelin’” are tied for number one from his early folk period, and “Highway 61” and “Blonde on Blonde” are undeniably great, even though they are a little too abstract at times.  But “Bringin’ It All Back Home” just seems to be a perfect sampler of what makes Dylan Dylan.

Movie - In Bruges:

Wow.  That’s all that can be said after the credits roll for this movie.  Without giving anything away, the ending of this film is one of the most perfectly bittersweet in film history, the kind that just makes you sit there for five minutes in stunned silence, trying to put a finger on exactly how you feel.  And this is a movie that involves hit men, suicide, mindless violence, and midgets on horse tranquilizers.  But make no mistake, this is an incredibly deep, intelligent movie, and more importantly, it is so without isolating itself from the average viewer.

This is a movie that everyone should be able to enjoy, except maybe for those kinds of people who like to put themselves in situations where they can get offended and complain about things.  The subject matter is black as night, but it’s always handled from the most down-to-earth perspective; there is plenty of violence, but it is not gratuitous, and certainly not unwatchable.  Of course, if you like British crime dramas, you’ll love this movie from the very beginning.  But it tackles subjects pertaining to life, death, right, and wrong that even The Godfather or Goodfellas don’t explore as deeply.  And it explores these things without being the least bit esoteric; actually, it’s also really, really funny.  If you care at all about film as an art form, see this movie.  And even if you don’t, see it anyway.  You’ll still love it.

BriTANicK: Web Site Review

The title page for the sketch comedy duo “BriTANicK” introduces them as “two guys wasting their degrees.”  This seems less like a joke when you read the description for their longest, most elaborate film, “Eagles Are Turning People Into Horses” (don’t even ask).  The movie was a Thesis Film for NYU, and according to the creators, it “garnered no support or money from any of the faculty, and nearly got [Brian McElhaney] thrown out of class.”  However, scroll down a bit further, and you’ll see beamingly positive reviews from three other sources, including the Chicago Tribune.  Creators Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher certainly know what they’re doing, even if we don’t.

However, the pair has been producing truly hilarious comedy shorts since long before the making of this film.  Ever since it has gradually become easier and easier for people to share videos around the world, there have been a lucky few who have managed to explode into fame (okay, not Leo DiCaprio fame or anything, but still, fame).  The Whitest Kids U Know is an excellent example of this, and each season of their show has been consistent in its wit, proving that the requirements and restrictions of TV format do not automatically cause people like this to run out of ideas.  Derrick Comedy had enormous potential, but their movie, “Mystery Team”, was a giant turd, and Donald Glover is now too busy doing stand-up and writing for 30 Rock to go back and rekindle the hilarity.  Somebody needs to step up and take their internet fame to the next level, and if Nick and Brian aren’t next in line, they’re certainly one of the most promising contenders.  In fact, Nick already landed a guest spot on an episode of Louie, a show that’s probably destined to go down as one of the most brilliant comedy shows in history.

Their website, www.britanick.com, has a refreshingly simple layout.  No flash, no flair; even the background is relaxing, looking like a wall out of a house from Santa Fe.  The different pages of the site are clearly placed at the top of every page, and their entire collection of videos is listed in mostly-chronological order.  Among their biggest gems are “Herpex”, “A Talk With Dad”, “Brainteasers”, and “Fudge”, though that last one may only appeal to fans of “A Christmas Story.”  Their humor is a bit on the dark side, but never too uncomfortable, always absurd enough to stay truly funny.  It also helps that the production value on even their earliest, cheapest videos always looks at least decent; it’s obvious that they care about the visual experience just as much as the humor.

The next time you find yourself wasting time on the internet, check out www.britanick.com.  They could be the next big thing.  At least, it’s about time they were.

Breaking Bad - Season 4, Episode 13 - "Face Off"

A good tagline for the first two seasons of Breaking Bad might have been, “So, it has come to this.” A good tagline for the current season, then, would be, “Mother of God, what the hell is wrong with me? Why, oh, why, did it have to come to this?!”

Make no mistake, this isn’t to say that it’s a bad show. In fact, quite the opposite; if season three didn’t manage to cement its status as one of the single greatest TV shows ever created, this season has pushed it above and beyond. For the uninitiated, Breaking Bad centers around Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a middle-aged high-school chemistry teacher who starts selling meth to cushion his family’s future, after he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer (tough break, considering he doesn’t even smoke). He takes on a partner named Jesse (Aaron Paul), a former student of Walt’s school who has already broken into the meth game, albeit weakly. They quickly establish themselves with the purest product this side of the Mississippi, but as the show progresses, their numerous flaws conspire to make nearly all of their victories hollow, and no matter how many problems they manage to solve, they always seem to just end up creating newer, much bigger ones. Jesse’s flaws are generally the usual pitfalls to be expected from a twenty-something punk with no real direction in life, but every character in the show manages to defy stereotype, and he is no exception. He is smart, but not educated, good at heart, but rough around the edges, and the irony of his character is that the more that Walt condescendingly underestimates and pigeonholes him, the more Jesse starts to overestimate himself. Whenever Jesse abandons common sense and charges headstrong into danger, it’s usually in reaction to Walt somehow belittling him. Of course, this ends up creating trouble for both him and Walt, who then chastises him even further. Jesse’s flaws are tragic, but we’ve felt like we owe it to Walt to go easy on him because of the cancer. Well, the cancer hasn’t been mentioned for a very long time now, and it’s getting easier and easier to hate Walt. At first, it was possible to chalk his brazen behavior up to extreme shock over his diagnosis. But now it’s become apparent that his numerous flaws were simply amplified by the cancer, not created by it. Walt has an attitude that the whole world owes him something for being so damn smart, and he has a paper-thin tolerance for anybody who doesn’t match his standards of intellectual superiority. Season two was about the fact that all of his actions have consequences, even if he doesn’t want to admit it. In this season, he is now either fully aware or completely in denial about these consequences, but it doesn’t matter, because he simply doesn’t care either way. In fact, looking back on the show with season-four-tinted lenses, it becomes painfully clear that he may never have cared about anyone else’s problems. Whenever he’s needed something from someone, he will stop at nothing to get it, even if it means hurting people along the way. But throughout the show, when Jesse has approached him with serious, sometimes life-threatening problems, some of which have even been Walt’s fault, he has coldly dismissed Jesse with some variation of the phrase, “It’s your mess. Clean it up.”

You’re probably wondering when this review will get into any details about the actual episode. Well, it’s pretty hard to talk about the plot of this episode to anybody who knows the show without ruining anything, and to someone unfamiliar with the show, it’s practically impossible to explain the events of the episode without the preceding four seasons worth of context. All that can really be said is that the title, “Face Off”, is probably the best indication of what to expect. It is a final and breathtaking clash of powers that have been building slowly episode after episode, and the climax elevates the already incredibly deep characters into something bigger than themselves, something larger than life. But in this ultimate payoff, this creation of legends, there is still an emptiness. There is a lingering feeling that what has happened in the episode, while stunning, was not really supposed to happen, that it always could have been avoided if not for Walt. And with this, the creators of Breaking Bad have accomplished something amazing; a perfectly crafted show, honestly poetic yet completely gripping to average viewers. The main character, the person we follow and who we’re supposed to identify with, has made a seamless transition from being brash but lovable in seasons one and two, to being the fool that we love to hate in season three. And now, with this season finale, the circle is complete, and Walt has completely and unapologetically become the shows only remaining villain. There is a great moment in this episode when he is attempting to contact his crooked lawyer, Saul (Bob Odenkirk), and gets into an argument with Saul’s secretary. It is a perfect example of how the consequences of Walt’s actions don’t even seem to register with him; this woman has been inadvertently taking crap from him ever since Saul took him on, and now that the two are finally face-to-face, it is revealed that her plight never even occurred to him. Veteran viewers of the show will remember Walt’s cowardly and tragic act toward the end of season two. Well, in the end of this episode, he does something damn near unforgivable. If you don’t hate him already, you will now. But you’ll still love the show.

Aqua Skyscraper Review

Nobody in their right mind would refer to the Chicago skyline as “an eyesore”. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for many of the buildings that compose it. The Sears Tower (it will never be the Willits Tower) is objectively one of the most impressive pieces of architecture of the 20th century, but at face value, the only thing (besides its height) that sets it apart from any other giant slab of offices in the city is that most Chicago office buildings are giant blocks, whereas the Sears Tower is several giant blocks. As Monty Python once said, “There’s no place for sentiment in big business.” Well, Jeanne Gang disagrees.

Gang is the designer of the Aqua, a building with a strikingly fluid design that made quite a splash when it was introduced, and continues to hold water as one of the most creative buildings of the last decade, with the potential to usher in a new wave of architecture. ...Liquid. Anyway, Gang is the founder of Studio Gang Architects, and the Aqua is to this date the largest skyscraper ever designed by a woman. In a city with as much financial business as Chicago, a woman’s touch stands out like a Rolls Royce in Appalachia. She set out to design a building that radically differs from all other Chicago skyscrapers, and succeeded on nearly every level. Even compared to other buildings that were designed with aesthetics in mind, it stands out. It’s not sleek and shiny, like Trump Tower or the new Roosevelt building. Nor is it grand and classical, like the Chicago Board of Trade. Honestly, it looks more like a balsa-wood model than an actual building. Yet in some ways, it almost looks more structurally sound than anything else. The building gets its name from the unique appearance of the balconies, which are designed to resemble ripples of water, and indeed, it’s impossible to look at this building without picturing a gentle afternoon breeze rolling over Lake Michigan. Unless you’re looking at it straight on from really far away. What you take out of this building depends almost entirely on what angle you see it from. If you’re looking at it straight on, as opposed to standing underneath it and looking up, you won’t realize the effect of the balconies. You will, however, notice that the balconies create a pattern in the empty space of the windows between them; a pattern that appears to be four rising plumes of flame. It’s an endlessly original design. Perhaps a statement is being made here, something about opposites being forced to coexist, even if they don’t want to. Or, maybe it’s something about how everything is different depending on how you look at it; like those optical illusions where the painting becomes something different when you turn it upside down.

Or, maybe it’s just hard to make a building like this and have it look pretty from every single angle. Regardless, kudos to Ms. Gang for designing one of the most refreshingly different buildings in decades.

Black Dogs Review

Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery. While the book’s full title may not be concise, it’ll send you into its pages with a pretty clear idea of what to expect. Even the most straight-laced of us have probably at least once or twice pondered the idea of flirting with danger. We love the antihero, the guy who’s facing insurmountable odds and risking his life as he knows it (and possibly his life, period), but for the wrong reasons. And no matter how much we know, deep down, that those reasons are “wrong”, we really really hope that he gets away with it. It’s why we love movies like Bonnie and Clyde, Heat, or The Usual Suspects. It’s why we love fictional TV shows like Breaking Bad or Weeds, not to mention nonfictional TV reenactments of newsworthy crimes: usually either a string of high risk heists from a 21st century Dillinger, or a one-in-a-million Perfect Crime masterminded by a quiet, unassuming everyman. And though it’s not always as easy for a book to capture your full attention as a movie or a TV show, Jason Buhrmester’s Black Dogs plows forward, just as tense and compelling as any of those movies or shows, if not more.

The title claims that the story is “possibly true”. Truthfully, it probably isn’t. At least, not the overall plot. Does the author really know what happened to that $203,000 that went missing from Led Zeppelin in New York? Probably not. Did a decent amount of the specific events and conversations within the story probably happen to the author and/or his friends at some point, under different circumstances? Certainly not! (Wink wink). It’s up to you to decide what is and isn’t true. If any of this stuff really happened, the names and places have been changed to protect the guilty. Really, it doesn’t matter how that money got stolen, or if Jason Buhrmester didn’t even hear out about it until years after it happened. Whatever the truth is, Black Dogs is probably better.

The story centers around four people: Patrick, the first-person narrator who seems to enjoy hating music more than he enjoys enjoying it. Pete, who despises the old nickname that Patrick refuses to stop calling him by: “Frenchy”. Keith, a remarkably adept car stereo thief who sells radios to the very people he later rips them off of, and who seems to be the most impoverished of the four. And Alex, who at the beginning of the story is just coming off an eight-month prison stretch that Patrick is partially at fault for. However, more at fault than Patrick is Alex’s uncle Danny, a sleazy, fast-talking, slow-thinking screw-up that Patrick loves to hate. You will too.

The four of them have spent most of their lives perfecting their various thievery techniques, when they’re not getting stoned or drunk and talking about music. They’ve been pretty successful through most of their escapades, but still, Ocean’s Eleven they ain’t. While working backstage catering at a Led Zeppelin concert, Patrick is struck with the idea for the score of a lifetime: an opportunity to steal the thousands and thousands of dollars that the biggest band in the world rakes in from a show. To pull it off, however, they’ll need an in to talk to Jimmy Page and keep Richard Cole, Zeppelin’s tour manager, distracted. On top of that, they’ll need to avoid Peter Grant, Zeppelin’s hardened, humorless, terrifying gorilla of a manager. The four think they’ve struck gold when they get the idea to approach Cole under the pretense of selling Page a guitar. But when Page doesn’t want what they have to offer, Frenchy panics and throws a desperate bargaining chip: he claims to have a 1958 Gibson Les Paul. This gets Jimmy’s attention, and he offers to buy it from them if they can bring it to him in New York. Trouble is, there’s only one ’58 Les Paul in town, and they’ll need to steal it from a pawn shop owned by the leader of the Holy Ghosts, a thinly veiled doppelgänger of the Hell’s Angels that somehow sound twice as terrifying as their real-life counterpart. On top of that, they’ll need extra help to break into the shop, and the only person with the skills they need just happens to be the infamous uncle Danny.

But all this doesn’t even begin to sum up the endless twists and turns of the story, which soon spirals out of control in a series of Catch 22s that would make the Coen Brothers cream their pants. It’s got action. It’s got suspense. It’s got betrayal. It’s got parties. It’s got fights. It’s even got a little obligatory romance, though somehow it only takes up as much of the story as it needs to. But most of all, it’s got music, and plenty of it. There are times when you won’t be sure if you’re reading a heist story or a Lester Bangs article. And Zeppelin fans be warned: the narrator loves to hate on them just as much as uncle Danny, and relishes every chance he gets to tear them a new one. But again, no one can tell you you’re supposed to like these guys. Hell, the reason Alex went to jail in the first place was for breaking into his own girlfriend’s house. Once again, Ocean’s Eleven they ain’t. But good storytellers they are, and if you’re willing to put aside those pesky notions of “right” and “wrong”, you’ll hang fast to the words of this book like the notes of your favorite rock and roll album.

Beware the Gonzo (2010) - Review

Beware the Gonzo seems all too familiar at times. That’s not to say that it’s a bad movie. It may even be a really good movie. But it’s not a great movie. If you’re a fan of Hunter S. Thompson, the title of the movie might catch your eye. After that, the plot might seem intriguing: An aspiring high school journalist gets kicked out of his school paper by its impossibly popular student editor, and rebels by forming his own underground paper. As you begin the movie, you may or may not be disappointed by the apparent lack of drug use by any of the characters... assuming you’re still a Hunter S. Thompson fan. And if you’re not a Hunter S. Thompson fan, you might realize even faster that the movie is gradually beginning to resemble a run-of-the-mill, raunchy, American Pie-like teen comedy. And then you’ll realize that it’s actually just another boy-meets-girl story.

It’s really hard to make an overall statement about this movie. It’s not a big-budget Hollywood movie, but it sure tries to come off as one. It is, in fact, an indie movie, but our only indication is the Tribeca Festival logo in the opening, and the fact that the only remotely recognizable cast member is Amy Sedaris of Strangers With Candy fame (she does a pretty good job as the main character’s success-obsessed mom). The main character in question is Eddie “Gonzo” Gilman, played by Ezra Miller, the first on a long list of unknown names. He seems a little like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which could be intentional on the part of the director. In the beginning of the film, he’s an outcast and a loser, even though as per usual to these kinds of movies, he’s actually way too outgoing and charismatic for that to be conceivable in real life. He starts out unable to get a story published to save his life. The primary antagonist of the the film, editor Gavin Reilly, promises him a “front page story”, only to cut out 90% of the story that Gonzo writes, save for one inspirational-sounding paragraph that was actually intended to be sarcasm. Meanwhile, he has no better luck on his own; his technique of approaching completely random people with a tape recorder and demanding their opinions on returning to school is met with insults and evasion tactics. This is obviously because he is a rebel and an outcast, and totally not because it’s a really bad, obnoxious journalistic technique. His friends are a color wheel of indie loser quirks: A scrawny kid with glasses who specializes in seducing particularly unattractive ladies, an even scrawnier kid with glasses who is the perpetual victim of the nameless, voiceless gang of jock bullies, and a quiet, unsettling Asian girl who seems to have a more deep-seated hatred of the popular cliques than any of the others. Fed up with their school having no outlet for “the voice of the little guy”, they decide to start their own revolution of journalism by creating a more unorthodox paper known as “The Gonzo Files”.

At this point, we have the obligatory montage of the gang “recruiting” new staff members, most of which are even more hopeless misfits than they are... how does that even fit in to the greater message of the movie? At the end of it, the cast is joined by the obligatorily hot love interest for Gonzo, Evie (Zoë Kravitz), who, according to rumor, may or may not be a whore (so obviously she’s not). It’s during this part that she gives the solution for every problem in the film, that no character ever seems to mention. She tells them that they have to create the paper as a website, not just a printed paper, because otherwise it would be a joke in today’s digital age. Not only do most of the paper’s strongest moments come from the videos posted to the website and the user input therein, but the main conflicts throughout the movie stem from the principal punishing (or threatening to punish) Gonzo, due only to the fact that he is actually printing the paper and distributing it during school hours without permission. When he does it the first time, he gets off easy, with the principal giving him a choice between merging with the school paper (and therefore surrendering to their rules) or releasing the paper on his own again, which would get him suspended. He chooses the latter, but the question remains: why was there even a choice? Why doesn’t he just cut his losses on the printed version and keep the paper going as a website? Not only could it not be policed by the school, they could break news the second that it happens, without even having to fill up a whole new issue.

That seems to be the prevalent theme throughout the movie: imaginary conflicts. It’s hard to identify with a main character who “lusts for freedom” when he goes to an expensive private school and lives in a nice suburban house with a smart lawyer dad who encourages him and a mom who protests his brashness but ultimately does nothing to stand in his way. And because he goes to such a fancy private school, it’s then hard to believe that the Gonzo’s biggest scoop (an admittedly major story in any capacity) is the health code violations of his school’s cafeteria. Everyone makes jokes about how much they hated school lunches growing up. It doesn’t mean that it’s realistic for an elite prep school to have actual live rats running around in the kitchen at night, while the security guard just shrugs it off as a regular thing. By the way, notice the part that said “at night?” Yeah, they broke into the cafeteria after dark and recorded themselves doing it, and this is somehow never brought up as a legal issue. Oh, and also, another of their pieces of evidence in the case against the cafeteria is a video of a popular girl throwing up after school, which in the previous issue they had claimed to be evidence that she was bulimic. When the cafeteria scandal issue comes out, she proudly points right at the story and says “See? I told you!” Apparently, libel is okay if your target can sometimes be a real bitch.

Again, this part and many other parts of the movie seem all too familiar. Instead of trying to change the school’s way of thinking about journalism, the heroes really only succeed in “investigating” the popular kids’ social lives to take them down a notch, because apparently gossip never existed. It was a better movie when it was Animal House, and then again when it was Revenge of the Nerds, and then again when it was Heathers, and then again when it was Mean Girls. Even the beginning of the movie seems familiar: it starts with a cold open of Gonzo addressing a camera with a broken nose, after most of the movie's events have already taken place, apologizing for the incidents that we are about to see unfold. It’s similar to Fight Club or American Beauty, but unlike either of those movies, there is no twist that puts the opening under a different light. The final message of the movie really is that the main character screwed up, and needs to beg for forgiveness. And then, as it turns out, he doesn’t even really seem to care about the forgiveness of his peers, or of his friends, or even about the overall integrity of the paper he’s created (which lives on in website form). He only cares about the girl.

Ironically, one of the strongest points of the movie is the primary (and, with the minor example of the principal, only) antagonist, Gavin (Jesse McCartney). Apart from him, none of the jock goons or rich preppy jerks seem to get more than two lines. But Gavin isn’t impossibly cruel, like the bullies in Animal House or Karate Kid, and he’s also not impossibly theatrical, like Heathers or Mean Girls. He’s just a genuinely flawed, arrogant guy: the kind of guy we could all imagine being popular in whatever high school we went to, the kind of guy we would love to hate in real life. But then again, maybe this isn’t a strong point. Movies that try to replicate real life with 100% accuracy aren’t always entertaining: look at Gerry. Fortunately, at least this movie isn’t boring. It’s just predictable. If you’re looking for another fun teen movie with some heart, hit it up on Netflix (it’s available to watch instantly, at least at the time of this review). However, if you’re looking for a truly unique, thought-provoking movie, save your time.