Saturday, December 17, 2011

The Myth of the American Sleepover - DVD Review

★★★★

Starring Claire Sloma, Marlon Morton, Amanda Bauer, Brett Jacobsen, Nikita Ramsey, Jade Ramsey, Annette DeNoyer and Wyatt McCallum.
Directed by David Robert Mitchell.

This beautiful night-in-the-life-of ensemble piece among Michigan teenagers is the best debut for a director since Richard Linklater with Dazed & Confused. Mitchell takes unknowns and amateur actors and puts them together in a sweet timeless piece that feels so real it could be a documentary at times.

The movie follows four threads. There's Maggie (Clare Sloma), who plays the Peppermint Patty to her friend's Marcie, as the two go from party to party looking for the right boy to kiss on the last night of summer. There's Rob (Marlon Morton), who spotted a cute girl in the supermarket and spends all night trying to find her. There's Claudia (Amanda Bauer), a sophomore who wonders if her boyfriend's been faithful to her. And there's Scott (Brett Jacobsen), a college student who's trying to find the cute twins he had a crush on in high school.

Like most low-budget indies, not much happens, and yet I loved following these characters around, hoping for each to find their desires. It makes one nostalgic for those times, not for what actually happened, but for what we deserved to happen

No comments: