So, me and my associate, Mr. Adam, have finally found our place in Southern California only to be barraged with earthquakes and the voice of Maria Shriver, wife of our governor, alerting us to buy a earthquake care package. That being said - LA is scary on so many levels - but still, we LOVE it here!

Anyway, as part of the Underhyped.com team, we are obliged to look at the annals of culture that seem so overhyped in order to either bring them down a peg, realize - SHOCK - that those works of art are actually works of art(!), or just realize we had our panties in a twist and shrug our shoulders. We really aren’t talking about films like “Batman Returns” either. That brand of overhypedness is bought and paid for - and hardly anyone is fooled. But there are other films that are more subversive elements within our culture. They slip into our vernacular so imperceptibly that one day we realize they are sleeping in our bed with us (kind of like spiders or bed bugs or heart-shaped “hug me” pillows). They are supposedly sleeper hits that mean something to us or are somehow relevant to our lives. As VIPW (Very Important People of the Web), we feel it is our duty to analyze and judge and criticize.

So - drumroll - we are going to review the importance of Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite on our everyday lives. These films came out in 2004 - but as sleeper hits, they have continued to reverberate (kind of like a magnitude 4.9 earthquake) in our lives through 2005. Me and my associate - ahem, my associate and I - have been holdouts, refusing to join the masses, until after enough self-imposed alienation, we watched them last night.

I Couldn’t Stop Braffing!

While Garden State probably isn’t the worst movie we’ve seen in our lives, it certainly is the worst movie we’ve seen this year to be universally embraced by a generation of young adults who have deep and moving feelings about life. If Zach Braff is this generations Dustin Hoffman, I think it’s safe to say that Ashton Kutcher is the new Paul Newman. That said, here’s a rundown of the love story highlights:

• Natalie Portman’s character is QUIRKY! I mean really quirky! And oh so cute, too. She plays such a multi-dimensional empowered woman who doesn’t need saved by anyone, let alone…
• … Zach Braff’s tortured/numbed sad-boy character, who hates drugs so much someone should arrange a meeting with Tom Cruise. He hates LA, hates/loves poor/stupid people and shows this hate by getting really inside himself, letting his jaw slacken and leaving his lower lip to wobble oh-so-Braffly.

Together they form a boring, laborious relationship the camera just doesn’t love. That being said, the relationships in this film just don’t make sense. Braff’s father (Ian Holm), a psychiatrist who has (predictably) overmedicated his son since he was a teenager and his (best?) friend from high school (Peter Sarsgaard), a gravedigger who (predictably) isn’t rising any higher from the ground, comprise the other relationships in Garden State. These relationships form story arcs that sit and spin - going nowhere. My guess is that writer/director/actor Braff is all about mood and atmosphere (mood and atmosphere borrowed from much superior artists from the Garden State soundtrack).

Story, or sense, for that matter, certainly doesn’t seem of utmost importance to Braff, who is content with The Graduate-lite story and character aspects. The scenes seem to be constructed to relay “cool” instead of substance and teenage melodrama over emotional resonance. For some weird reason though, no one seems to see this! Oh, there are those reviewers who knew better but were kind to Braff, not wanting to destroy this young ruffian (a kindness not given to directors who have made-it like Oliver Stone). I have a feeling that many reviewers where saving their barbs for movies like Alexander - but for no purpose because who went to see that movie anyway? People (mainly young men and women who are in their “cop an identity” mode) did see Garden State though - and liked it. What a Braffian shame - it almost makes me want to write “Balls” on my face.

Napoleon is Fleeting, But Dynamite is Forever

We were terrified to watch Napoleon Dynamite, ever since our cousin said, “Hey, have you watched Napoleon Dynamite? What?! You haven’t? Oh man, that’s totally Your-Kind-of-Movie!”

Clearly anything the world thinks is your kind of movie is scary to watch, not only because of what it says about you if it’s true, but more so what it says about what other people think of you. And that can just be insulting.

That said, Napoleon Dynamite left me beyond pleasantly surprised. The movie was earnest and committed to its characters rather than exploitative and flippant (read: good rather than Braff). The jokes were charming, and the Dynamite universe, though a little bit on the Wes Anderson side, still stood on its own feet.

The plot is conventional, a few scenes seem to have been shot by a completely different director (basically any scene with Napoleon’s grandma shot close-up), and the ending sort of falls apart (about four really bad scenes in a row sort of ruin its momentum), but no more than any other high school coming-of-age crapper. The movie is carried by its characters, who are surprisingly endearing.

While we still don’t understand how this movie has inspired such an impressive (cult?) following (Vote for Pedro, Liger, Tater Tots, et al. were all well-known Dynamitian phrases to us well before we watched this film), we don’t terribly mind being told that this is Our-Kind-of-Movie. It’s not, but if it’s got to be anything, God, we’d so much rather it be Napoleon Dynamite than Garden State.

With Love,
Underhyped.com