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By Dylan McHugh
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Apr. 27, 2009 |
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A comedy about suicide? That is tough to pull off. Too funny or off-color and it will offend people. Too dry, and it will become as unbearable as a funeral dirge with bad violinists.
In My Suicide, the protagonist decides to kill himself on camera. This is not as depressing as it sounds. Gabriel Sunday, a Disney Channel star taking a departure from his usual sunny-side up type of roles, relishes the idea of suicide as Archie, a disillusioned teen with a penchant for dramatics. Archie seems determined not to make his suicide movie a eulogy, but a comedy with lightning-quick surreal fantasies and clips of whatever pops into his depraved mind. Until fellow tween-star Brooke Nevin, playing the sultry Sierra, enters the picture and proceeds to complicate things.
The movie is delightfully self-aware. At one point, the exasperated protagonist whispers to the camera, “We’re already 90 minutes into the movie, and I still haven’t committed suicide yet?!” Voice-overs on flashbacks. All very clever.
This film is an irreverent lambasting of social attitudes toward suicide. Eclectic, spontaneous asides. Rotoscope comic-book-esque animations of a bullet going though a skull. At least halfway through, that is, before it gets serious, artificial and overwrought. The movie becomes what it was trying to parody: a melodrama mini-soap opera against the dangers of depression. “I’m committing suicide!” No longer social commentary, just a bad ABC Family channel special.
This movie is suicide for the Myspace generation. Quick. Fast. Pumped with acoustic guitar during emotional scenes. In fact, a lot like Myspace — Entertaining, but emotionally hollow.
It’s Not Me, I Swear
This film is fantastic. Period. End of review.
Just kidding.
This movie is beautiful in every visual facet. The picturesque French-Canadian rural countryside in the summer is complemented by amazing cinematography, with wide shots that look like they were pulled out of a children’s picture book, with an idyllic town to match.
The protagonist of the film, Leon, would inevitably be the bully of said book. He is mean, he lies, he breaks things and he has no general respect for other peoples’ things or authority, and yet he is easily one of the most lovable characters. At one point he breaks into a house, destroys nearly everything and cuts himself to prove his alibi that he fell out of a tree searching for a lost kitten, but these actions have all the ferocity and splendor of a Calvin and Hobbes strip. His motto (and his mother’s) is “it is bad to lie, but worse to lie badly.” Leon is a true 12-year-old delinquent instantly identifiable to anyone who has ever been 12-years-old.
At its core, this movie has a cliché concept (a boy searching for his mother, big whoop), but its execution is perfect; in part because of his love interest, Lea, who is the perfect mix of spunky 12-year-old queen of the playground and mischievous instigator of havoc. She is puppy love incarnate, and people who have ever had crushes while they were young should be able to fondly remember their school days just by looking at her.
This is not a run-of-the-mill movie with run-of-the-mill characters and run-of-the-mill dialogue. Everything about this film feels natural, genuine and easily relatable. This is not so much a Movie, that has a big budget and recognizable actors that were paid millions to be in, but a story: it is as though little Leon grew up and told you a tale about his younger days with every splendid detail intact. When everything comes together — the characters, the landscapes, the plot — it becomes a movie with heart and soul.
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