This film is a healthy dive into the deep dark well of the quarter-life crisis. If you deny the existence of this place in the human timeline, well then you’re either not 25 or your parents bought you lifelong adolescence for your 16th birthday. Life between 25 and 35 is a ghost hunt. You’re constantly hearing voices in the dark. Childish giggles from your past and fading apparitions of what your future could be. You’re moving into a mansion you’ve inherited from your dead great grandpa, but he failed to tell you that it was built over your family burial ground.
All of the usual spooks haunt this film. The father who’s been dead to you since he moved out, the mother who wishes that she could save you, the jerks who scarred your innocence so deeply that the gash still bleeds, drinking until it becomes an issue that you don’t like to talk about, the crushing weight of loneliness, and the significant others who stepped over you in their effort to grow. These aspects give this film a brutal sense of normality. Within the first 15 minutes you know Owen (the main character), and develop a sympathy for him and his plight. Genius.
For those who grew up in the Greater Cleveland area, this film’s familiarity doubles. No, triples. Big Boy, the restaurant with the creepy greaser holding a burger as a mascot, plays a key role in the film. Owen takes a picture in front of the giant “free” stamp. The dark and gritty secrets of Berea are revealed. Passer-bys are interviewed in front of the Jake. All of these aspects make this a Cleveland movie, and add another frothy layer you can relate to.
The film follows Owen down a kind of quarter-life bucket list, as the title implies. The first scenes are light and comical. We find out that fishing for squirrels isn’t cruel and we are given an explanation as to why. We see a staggeringly low health insurance payout turned into art. We laugh, we’re buttered up. Then the film goes a little deeper into the well. It gets a smidge darker. Then a smidge darker. Then whammy, we crash into the fiery magma of our beloved Owen’s personal hell. These transitions add tragedy, and for many viewers, will rip away the cushy shag relationship that they feel towards the main protagonist and drop them into the lake of fire that he feels every day. The theatre is a little hotter. The audience is a little uncomfortable. The film maker is a pro. This emotional demon drop does what I love for films to do, catch the watcher off guard. Lull them in with laughs, tender moments, and fond remembrances, then when they least expect it pull the pin and the trap goes *snap*. While the watchers may have similar experiences, this film shows Owen’s personal pain. Viewers witness firsthand how it’s torn him apart, and how they can never relate to his reactions. It becomes the blood sweat and tears of Owen’s body splattered onto the big screen making it his film. It becomes brave and brazen. As courageous as Rocky Balboa himself.
The entire film is a roller coaster that you think that you’ve been on. You recognize the loops. You throw your hands in the air at the peak of the next drop, but then the ride breaks and just as you turn to the rider at your left to ask what happened you’re launched onto a rail beyond recognition and the breathe is sucked from your gaping mouth. I loved it. I give it 10 out of 5 (because I saw it twice).
All of the usual spooks haunt this film. The father who’s been dead to you since he moved out, the mother who wishes that she could save you, the jerks who scarred your innocence so deeply that the gash still bleeds, drinking until it becomes an issue that you don’t like to talk about, the crushing weight of loneliness, and the significant others who stepped over you in their effort to grow. These aspects give this film a brutal sense of normality. Within the first 15 minutes you know Owen (the main character), and develop a sympathy for him and his plight. Genius.
For those who grew up in the Greater Cleveland area, this film’s familiarity doubles. No, triples. Big Boy, the restaurant with the creepy greaser holding a burger as a mascot, plays a key role in the film. Owen takes a picture in front of the giant “free” stamp. The dark and gritty secrets of Berea are revealed. Passer-bys are interviewed in front of the Jake. All of these aspects make this a Cleveland movie, and add another frothy layer you can relate to.
The film follows Owen down a kind of quarter-life bucket list, as the title implies. The first scenes are light and comical. We find out that fishing for squirrels isn’t cruel and we are given an explanation as to why. We see a staggeringly low health insurance payout turned into art. We laugh, we’re buttered up. Then the film goes a little deeper into the well. It gets a smidge darker. Then a smidge darker. Then whammy, we crash into the fiery magma of our beloved Owen’s personal hell. These transitions add tragedy, and for many viewers, will rip away the cushy shag relationship that they feel towards the main protagonist and drop them into the lake of fire that he feels every day. The theatre is a little hotter. The audience is a little uncomfortable. The film maker is a pro. This emotional demon drop does what I love for films to do, catch the watcher off guard. Lull them in with laughs, tender moments, and fond remembrances, then when they least expect it pull the pin and the trap goes *snap*. While the watchers may have similar experiences, this film shows Owen’s personal pain. Viewers witness firsthand how it’s torn him apart, and how they can never relate to his reactions. It becomes the blood sweat and tears of Owen’s body splattered onto the big screen making it his film. It becomes brave and brazen. As courageous as Rocky Balboa himself.
The entire film is a roller coaster that you think that you’ve been on. You recognize the loops. You throw your hands in the air at the peak of the next drop, but then the ride breaks and just as you turn to the rider at your left to ask what happened you’re launched onto a rail beyond recognition and the breathe is sucked from your gaping mouth. I loved it. I give it 10 out of 5 (because I saw it twice).
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