Kaboom!

 

When I first went to watch ‘Kaboom!’ I never intended to review it, I thought I deserved a night off. I just wanted to watch a film that I didn’t over-analyse, or try to out-smart and predict (which I have been known to do). But as the movie went on I found myself itching to jot down my thoughts so I could share them with an audience. This need became so great the I ended up using my phone as a notepad to hold my long stream of consciousness about Greg Araki’s latest film. The last thought I typed down pretty much sums up how this review will go ‘It’s just bad’.

The most important aspects of any film are a good plot and a good script; ‘Kaboom!’ fell down with both. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that it all starts off so well (or at least average) with young arts student Smith (Thomas Dekker) experiencing the ‘student life’ of parties, pills and a lot of sex.  Since Smith is a gay boy, but is seen having more sex with girls, it seems that Araki is trying to show the fluidity of sexuality, nothing that hasn’t been done before.  In fact everyone seems to be jumping into bed with everyone, both boys and girls, all except Smith’s lesbian friend Stella(Haley Bennett) who stays firmly in her pigeonhole. Although the amount of sex is over the top, and the excuses to remove clothes are more poorly veiled than in ‘Twilight’, it is what we have come to expect from these coming out/coming of ages stories. So although the plot was predictable, it did not irritate the audience, merely bore them. However, it appears Araki saw this coming and decided that in the last 20 minutes the film would lose the plot and all hell would break loose. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, the film is full of secret societies, paranormal powers, messiahs, nuclear arms and SPOLIER- the end of the world-. The last quarter makes the whole film feel disjointed and not fully thought through; like a GCSE film project that wishes to mimic the absurdity of ‘Donnie Darko’.  But where ‘Donnie Darko’ had hints and strangeness from the very beginning, ‘Kaboom!’ threw most of it in at the end. To give ‘Kaboom!’ its due the plot no longer becomes predictable, but that is only because it becomes so obscure you are left wondering if this is meant to be mocking something you’re not familiar with.

Now I come to the other integral part of a film-the script, and this one is almost as easy to poke fun of as the plot. The entire film is an out of proportion melodrama and this is reflected in the writing, with its over the top language and awkward rapport. The explicit sexual conversations, which is all these teens seem to talk about, feels as if it comes straight from the Sex and the City guide to meal conversation. On top of that, to show that the writers are hip, cool and trendy the script is full of modern pop references that are inorganically inserted into conversation. Even though there are a lot of problems with the script, I will admit there some great lines delivered by the female cast. They range from ‘I need to pee like a banshee’ to ‘It’s a vagina, not a plate of spaghetti’ and even ‘You meet some guy on a nude beach and after five minutes you’re downloading his hard drive in the back of a van. You’re a slut.’ which has to be best line in the film.

The final problem with the film has to be the characters; all are incredibly flat with little to them and spark no interest from the audience. The central character Smith, his best friend Stella and sex buddy London have little going for them (or against them to be fair), while minor characters like Smith’s roommate Thor or Stella’s witchy lover Lorelei add so little that you wonder if there is any reason for them to be included at all.  Every member of the cast is constantly stunning to look at, but this becomes a problem when they are constantly stunning, even after a 5-hour sex session Stella’s hair and make up are still perfectly applied. I expect many women wish to know her secret. Why can’t directors bring themselves to show sex for the gritty, sweaty enjoyment that we all know it is? This filtered, romanticised view does the film no favours.

Overall it is disappointing that Araki who has released ‘Mysterious Skin’, which dealt honestly with the dark issues of child molestation, has decided to direct something as shallow as ‘Kaboom!’ turned out to be. I may be wrong, God knows critics and bloggers have been in the past. ‘Kaboom!’ may gather a cult following like other ‘great before their time’ classics such as ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘Donnie Darko’. Maybe I missed the point; I will admit I heard people leaving the cinema raving about how ‘truly amazing’ it was. However, for me the whole thing was just rubbish.

Degree-Fail

This film just doesn’t know what to be or do with 

itself. It starts off one thing and ends another

and is just boring and annoying to watch-a real shame.

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