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straight to DVD genre of films has never appealed
much to my appetite for cinematic intake. Not like
every film that makes it to theatres is a
masterpiece, but most of the time I am just never
satisfied or nourished by movies of this nature,
unless they star famous hip hop artists whose
music I enjoy and whose attempts at acting I enjoy
laughing at. The scriptwriting found in the genre
is always a hokey, embarrassing abortion and the
acting falls somewhere below that. I am left
ruminating on such questions as: do the people
responsible for these films have some serious
psychological diagnoses that have gone undiagnosed
their whole lives, and more importantly, when they
watch the final cut of their work do they proclaim
"this is f***ing incredible"?
In many aspects, Josh Logan's
hitchhiking psycho-drama "Family" is a
color by numbers straight to DVD nightmare, though
somehow, as a whole, it is a decent film. And I
mean decent in the best possible way that the
adjective decent can be meant, e.g. getting thrown
in jail for the night ended up being decent,
my cellmate was a flamboyant transgender escort
who made insinuating jokes about me, not, I slept
with that
Victoria
's Secret model from the commercial and it was decent.
"Family" begins
with a female convict, in her orange one piece,
escaping from prison through a wheat field of some
sort. The visuals fade in and out to black in a
poor attempt to immediately grasp the viewer's
attention. I recall this exact technique being
used in the opening sequence of the Johnny Depp
starring indie western "Dead Man". That
turned out to be a decent film, though it was of
the latter kind as stated above for it was
excruciatingly boring.
Jean (Renee Humphrey) is an
escapee with a predilection for theft, a laundry
list of failed relationships and a trashy mother.
We learn this within the first five minutes of the
film. Her character does not really progress much
from that. Maybe she is meant to have some great
revelation towards the end of the film, but the
writing is so banal that it just doesn't come
through. Stranded out in the countryside with
nothing but a pair of daisy dukes and a twenty
spot she stole from a nice old couple whom she
gagged and bound, Jean takes an ill-fated ride
with burgeoning head case Eldon (Boyd Kestner) and
his son Cole (Tanner Richie).
Long car rides can turn
anyone violent, what with the body odor and
mindless chatter, but on Eldon's trip, sh*t gets
wild. Secrets about Eldon's life are fed to us
evenly and the tension is meant to mount with each
one. He was a cop. His wife left him and took
their kid. The kid in the car isn't his. He starts
killing people, etc. While you can safely assume
that I am not at all impressed with the screenplay
-- and I will get to that -- I found Boyd
Kestner's performance to be fantastic.
Kestner is why
"Family" is rentable and not a complete
waste of DVD's. As Eldon, he perches himself
delicately on the edge of moral respectability and
utter insanity, making the character truly evil.
We know he is off the moment he cracks his first
make-believe corny dad smile, and Kestner never
allows the character to slip throughout the film.
Why "Family" is
only a decent film is because of the script.
Writer Hudson Shock's treatment is so mediocre and
predictable that I will estimate it took him less
than one day to finish it. The big, underlying
messages fall loose leaf flat, and the attempts to
create "noir" characters, like the two
diner owning killer queens, is similarly limp. And
the outlandishly literal playing out of one of
those major themes at the end of the film is
enough to make one cringe in disbelief. I won't
ruin the surprise, but once a point is guilelessly
drilled into your head for an hour and a half by
weak dialogue, does it really need to be shown
visually for extra reinforcement? Is the public
that analytically deficient?
When "Family" is
released and available, I say check it out
sometime. Watch a relatively unknown actor give a
great performance that will make you uncomfortable
and temporarily weary of both your own father and
cops, or even worse, your own father who is a cop.
Support a decent film which was most likely made
from just a decent amount of money, and expect a
decent amount of satisfaction when it is over.
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