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Friday, September 21, 2007
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I'm Reed Fish
It's always a little annoying when a film comes this close to greatness, only to get bogged down in other shit and never quite get there. That is the case with I'm Reed Fish, a little movie with a big heart that tries to take a familiar story and turn it into something fresh.
Our story concerns Reed Fish (Jay Baruchel - Undeclared, Knocked Up), who is the morning radio show host of the only station in his small town. He took over the job from his father when he died, and, now in his early twenties, isn't quite sure whether he should stay in his small town of about a hundred people, or move on to something else.
There's lots of things this movie gets right. Small-town life is captured with spot-on accuracy, and the restlessness of people who have nothing to do but complain about "that one bad intersection in town" is painfully familar to me in a sharply funny way. It shouldn't be any surprise that these aspects connect in the right way, as this story is based on true events and the "Reed Fish" of the title also wrote the script. The problem with the story is the structure of its screenplay. It resorts to using the gimmicky "movie-within-a-movie" thing, where, in this film, Reed Fish is filming a movie about the events that transpired in his life, and about a half hour in, we see that the two female roles in the story have actually been played by two actresses, and the real girls come up and speak to him (during the premiere) and we learn that these are the actual people. Confused yet? That's not the worst part. Instead of following this thread all the way through the film, we don't see anything more of this "premiere" until the end, where the rest of the story continues, but this time the emotional ties are wrapped up with completely different actresses talking to him. This was a great, simple story, and had they stayed true to that, there would have been a wonderful emotional payoff at the end. As it is, you have to constantly remind yourself at the end who he's talking to, and the energy that could have been invested in the moment is wasted concentrating on the formalities of the story.
All in all, this is a wonderfully made little story about growing up. It's not the surprise that Garden State was, but still completely worth a look. Particularly of note was how tame the film is. It's rated PG, and the event that tears everything apart is not a murder or an affair, but a kiss, and the purity of that was refreshing. There's a little too much music playing over lots of scenes, and the humor feels a bit forced at times, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with this. Baruchel won Best Actor at the U.S Comedy Arts Festival (which is quickly becoming the new Sundance), and it's richly deserved. Another thing which lifted the film much higher in the second act was a couple of actress Schuyler Fisk's original songs (particularly this scene, which gives a nice, grandiose feeling and sense of longing to the rest of the movie).
A nice spin on an old story, I'm Reed Fish attempts to go beyond the sum of its parts, and that's a welcome thing.
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