Screenhead

Magnolia Pictures seems to come out with literally a panoply of bizarre, out of nowhere material that can mostly only be had at the local video store.  Sometimes, they even manage to get some big name actors involved like Evan Rachel Wood and Uma Thurman.  One of the many from Magnolia is Graduation, a recent release that wants desperately to be Ocean’s Eleven for the high school set. This one will include Adam Arkin, in case you’re wondering.

Four friends are in some seriously deep trouble when one of their mother’s cancer gets so deeply bad that a bone marrow transplant is required to save her life.  Of course, it’s about at this point where the mother’s health insurance decides that it’s costing entirely too much to keep this useless eater alive and thus cancels her coverage.  Now, in order to save her life, the foursome’s going to need to drum up a hundred thousand dollars.

At this point, it can really only be described as convenient that one of the friends is the daughter of the manager of the town’s only bank.

You can imagine where this goes.  If the phrase “bank robbery” crossed your mind, congratulations.  You’re psychic, as proven by the fact that you know what a movie’s going to be about before you even see past the box art.

The down side of this movie is that it’s got low-budget stamped all over it.  For instance, within the first three minutes we’re going to see one of the kids go to his job at “Value Basement”.  This would not ordinarily be a problem except that, literally seconds later, a sign on the door reveals that they are in fact at a Big Lots.  Nothing like a lapse in continuity to literally start the movie.

Aside from this, I do have to admit that the movie has its share of charm.  While these young folks plot their felony, they also have to grapple with the more mundane things of life.  They’ll have their relationship drama, and some romantic issues going on, and plenty of funnier things, like the green-haired friend storming the prom with his older woman date in tow.

Even better, the wheels will come off of their plan in rapid fashion, direct results of all those mundane things of life that just sort of seem to crop up.   They say that there’s nothing like the feeling when a plan comes together.  Conversely, there’s nothing quite like watching a plan fall apart and go wildly off the rails.  While I’ll readily admit that the kids definitely have some mad improvisational skills, and they’re up against some fairly sizable obstacles by the end there, clearly no one taught them the KISS principle, or, Keep It Simple, Stupid.  And being teenagers, plenty of things will get in the way of their little endeavor, but they in turn will bring to bear some incredible teamwork and some really clever plots.  I’m downright impressed.

This movie almost has charm despite itself.  It’s a good movie, that’s got plenty of serious low-budget problems, but it’s still trying its best.  If it had paid a little closer attention and fixed some of its continuity errors, this would be a lot better off than it was.

But still, despite some mistakes, Graduation is a solid movie with a unique and clever plotline.  Good enough to rate an eight out of ten, anyway.

Popularity: 1% [?]