The slack life.
(2014) Drama (Random) Marshall Walker Lee, Megan Carver, Tyler Andre, Margaret Douglas, Robert Thrush, Jordan Wilgus, Steven Felts, William H. Wilson, Nickolas Mitchell, Ethan Zinn-Brown, Luke Potter, The Crow, The Wolf, Wes Lysiak, Skylar Jensen, Shay Bjorndahl, Perla Bonilla, Erin O’Connor, Alexandra Metaxa, Katerina Georgiou. Directed by Alex Cassun
Welcome to being a grown-up. I know it’s not something you particularly wanted to do; it just happened. There’s no real prize for getting here and it tends to be a pain in the you-know-where. For your trouble, however, you get free elevated stress levels. Isn’t that nice?
Lou (Lee) returns to his home town of Portland after an absence of an unspecified number of years; his friends are at first happy to see him back but more as a curiosity and Lou isn’t really forthcoming about where he’s been and why he’s back. Some, of course, are happier to see him than others.
Lou had been a street musician, playing for pocket change and using what he made “busking” for what things he needed – mainly food and alcohol. He’s determined not to resume that lifestyle however; he wants a job and a life, but considering that he’s never really had gainful employment before it’s not easy to find anything other than a dead-end minimum wage job which he takes.
Lou is crashing for now in his friend Jackie’s (Carver) van where she also lives; the two are, as friends in close quarters often will, start to get on each other’s nerves. Lou spends time talking to a therapist (Wilson) on a park bench when he’s not trying to navigate the rat race, much to the contempt of his friends.
You see, they are all continuing to busk and live life on their own terms and are all the happier for it. They have an event to look forward to; ten years prior they (including Lou) had buried a time capsule in the yard of a house some of them owned. They have decided to dig it up and are organizing a party, called “The Big Dig” to celebrate it. Lou has been inviting but he is often a no-show for things that he is invited to these days.
I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that made me feel quite so much like a crotchety old man in quite some time. This is a young person’s film dealing with young person’s issues and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Happiness is important to these characters as it is indeed to all of us; most of us in the rat race aren’t necessarily there because we don’t want to be happy. Even mind-numbing make-work kinds of jobs can occasionally give us a feeling of satisfaction and/or accomplishment though.
There is almost a contempt for people who work here at times an that might be irritating to those who actually, you know, work. Portland can be a great place for street musicians but not all of us live there; I get that the artistic mentality is different from that of the working class and just as valid in its own way but I can see how those who work hard just to tread water might be a little bit insulted by this.
The performances are pretty decent considering that the cast is largely locals and unprofessional. I suspect Cassun comes from a musical background because his soundtrack choices betray a really good ear. The problem I had is that I couldn’t get into most of the characters; there was nothing here for me to grab onto and as a result I found myself less and less enthused about finding out what happens to Lou and his friends. By the time the Big Dig rolls around, the mystery behind Lou’s disappearance is revealed (you should be able to figure it out) and I didn’t really care very much about it to begin with.
I try to give low-budget indies a pass for the most part and it’s plain to see that the director invested heart and soul into this film but sometimes that isn’t enough. I need to be invested in the lives of the characters; I need to care about what happens to them. I need to be excited about what comes next. None of that ever happened during the film. As you can tell by the release date, it’s been bopping around the Festival circuit and otherwise sitting on the shelf for five years until Random Media got hold of it for home video release. They believe in the film and maybe you will to once you see it but this was one I never found myself connecting with.
REASONS TO SEE: Tackles the age-old question of happiness versus adulting.
REASONS TO AVOID: A little bit of a bore.
FAMILY VALUES: There is a fair amount of profanity.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The house where the “Big Dig” takes place is actually the rehearsal space for the Portland-based band Typhoon.
BEYOND THE THEATER: Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/11/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Portlandia
FINAL RATING: 5/10
NEXT: Them That Follow
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