Stars Josh Hutcherson, Shanley Caswell, Spencer Locke, Aaron David Johnson, Parker Bagley, JR Osborne, Walter Perez, Jonathan Park, and Dane Cook Directed by Joseph Kahn This is one of those films. It's the kind that is discovered rather than noticed. You know the kind. It seems typical of a particular genre on the surface, easily dismissed., The poster doesn't do much to sell the movie. Neither does the trailer. It seems aimed at a niche audience. There's maybe one or two known stars in the cast list. There isn't anything that maybe you haven't seen before. But there is something else lurking underneath it if you pay a little attention. There's an intelligence at work. And given time, it forms a cult following. And after you discover it, you can't believe you've never seen it before. You know the kind of film, right? Detention has its preachers, its haters and its critics although there is very little middle ground between the love and the hate. The appeal is more towards those who watch movies as a hobby and those who enjoy genre movies, particularly horror, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy et al. Detention makes no qualms about being an R-rated teen movie, which starts off with a stab at the horror genre. Then again, it does suffer a little from the various genres the movie appears to be flipping through. However, therein lies the fun of the movie. Now, this is not a movie that is going to appeal to everybody. No movie actually does that. Some might find Detention to be rather gross in some of its approaches. The main titles design alone end with the director's name formed in vomit. There is a gratuitous bit of nudity, played as a joke. The gore itself, however, is not that far from a typical horror movie, complete with bloodletting and dismemberments. Even in that, it's not quite frightening nor scary. Humour permeates throughout and there is a sense of the movie being a spoof as it touches on and plays up various influences spanning three decades. Just to give you a feel, there are shades of Scream, Ferris Bueller, Donnie Darko, Back To The Future, The Matrix, Freaky Friday, The Fly, The Breakfast Club and many more mixed into the plot, the dialogue and numerous back-stories that are peppered throughout the movie.Some might feel that the writer / director might be trying to hard, but it felt far more organic compared to the other spoof movies by Friedberg and Seltzer (see Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet The Spartans, Date Movie and the upcoming The Starving Games, each more abysmal as it goes). So falling into that category of movies, there would be some complains against it. Don't let it deter you from checking it out and discovering Detention for yourself. I enjoyed the humour of the movie, the odd quirks of the characters and Josh Hutcherson brings to life one of the coolest teen heroes in Clapton Davis since Ferris Bueller. I laughed quite a bit throughout the movie. And I love the sci-fi detour in the final act (although it is highlighted very early on with lots of hints dropped along the way) and there's that cool meta joke about… it's hard to explain that one. You just have to watch it to see what I mean. Chances are, it might surprise you and you've discovered a unique movie along the way.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
December 2017
|