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.