| THE TIP OF HIS TONGUE : 'This Filthy World' and 'Rocket Science' : for Tribune |
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| Monday, 24 September 2007 | |
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This Filthy World [7/10] US 2006 (Documentary) with : John Waters Director : Jeff Garlin ... Rocket Science [5/10] US 2007 Starring : Reece Daniel Thompson, Anna Kendrick Director : Jeffrey Blitz ... both films are released in the UK on Friday September 28th ... EYEBROWS may perhaps have been raised in certain quarters when This Filthy World was announced among the lineup for last month's prestigious, six-decades-old Edinburgh International Film Festival. Strictly speaking, the picture shouldn't be in any film festival which - like Edinburgh - likes to pride itself on "innovative" and "cutting edge" fare. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't really be in any film festival at all, as it isn't really a film - just a frill-free video-recording of a spoken-word event in Manhattan designed to showcase the raconteur skills of John Waters (writer-director of Hairspray, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, Female Trouble, etc.) And strictly speaking it's simply unacceptable that a "film" about a man whose own work has been so gloriously confrontational, envelope-pushing and iconoclastic should be itself so creatively conservative, so risk-less, so cosily nostalgic, so very safe - especially as director Jeff Garlin is best known for his (acting) work on the superbly acidic Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's just as well, then, that Waters himself should save the day - and then some - by delivering an extended monologue about his life and unique career that's so compulsively entertaining and so consistently hilarious. Needless to say, much time is devoted to the late and still very much lamented Divine (1945-88), the sui generis (and, in many ways, so generous), Waters' most celebrated and notorious "partner-in-crime"... and that's crime in the most literal sense of the word, during certain especially wild adventures in the era before Waters became a semi-respectable figure in Baltimore's artistic firmament. Waters' many fans - a coterie swollen by the recent Hairspray remake and Broadway/West End adaptations - will be in hog(-princess) heaven. 'Dreamland', to be exact, that being the name of the great man's own production company, as well as being the (only semi-ironic) term initiates use to describe his gallery of inimitable Baltimorean 'superstars'. Newcomers, meanwhile, will be trawling Amazon in search of Waters' back-catalogue at the earliest (in-)decent opportunity - and it should be remembered that his books are just as raucously outrageous as anything he's so far committed to celluloid. THOUGH not without interest and some moments of charm, Rocket Science must count as a disappointing fiction-feature debut from the director of 2003's terrific spelling-bee documentary Spellbound. Blitz hasn't exactly tried to break new ground for himself in terms of subject-matter, his focus here being on another type of geeky competition among precocious schoolchildren: high school debating contests. In the USA, such contests apparently require the participants to deliver their comments with the speed of an ice-hockey commentator on amphetamines - rendering them all but incomprehensible to the ear, and surely doing little to help youngsters properly explore the hot-button subjects they've been asked to discuss. Nevertheless, the children themselves soon become fluent at this bizarre form of speech... with the exception of Rocket Science's eager-to-please young hero Hal Hefner (Thompson), whose ambition to excel in this particular form of polite gladiatorial combat - and thus impress the girl of his dreams, star-debater Ginny (Kendrick) - is hampered by a pronounced stutter. It's a cutesy enough premise, but Blitz makes it feel even more precious with the copious use of the kind of omniscient, authorial narration which marred Todd Field's Little Children (2006). A bigger problem is that writer-director Blitz, having gone to the trouble of creating a vivid gallery of characters, places one of the least interesting at the centre of the narrative. This means that vivid supporting turns from Vincent Piazza (as Hal's loutish brother) and Nicholas d'Agosto (as the former debating champ Hal turns to in order to boost his own skills) are frustratingly sidelined: Blitz might have been better advised to aim for more of an ensemble-type piece. Instead, what we end up with is a kind of Rushmore lite: and the derivative and over-familiar air of quirky-indieness is all the more ironic coming from a picture which is supposedly all about finding the confidence to express one's own individual voice. Neil Young written for the next issue of Tribune magazine, and adapted from the original Edinburgh Film Festival reports (This Filthy World; Rocket Science) 
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