Shorts

Seen at: Lincoln Popcorn Palace in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at 7:15 pm on Nov. 4

When I first arrived back in Fort Collins last month, I spent the first week scrambling to see any movies that were about to leave theaters for good. Shorts was at the top of my list, but I just couldn't muster up the energy to chase it down on its last day playing out in Fort Morgan, which is about eighty miles distant on the Plains. Thus I resigned myself to seeing it on DVD, which I didn't figure was too big a loss, since the trailers made this kid movie seem rather chaotic and unappealing.

Imagine my delight, however, when I saw that it had reappeared a couple weeks ago, back from the dead, to play in the area. Moreover it was showing at my favorite theater in these parts---the awesome grand old Lincoln Popcorn Palace in downtown Cheyenne. What a great excuse for trip up there.

As I mentioned, I used the trip to visit the Carmike Frontier in the mall north of town to see Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. Afterwards, I drove into downtown Cheyenne and explored the streaks a little before ducking into the LPP. It's a privilege to see a flick in an old theater like this.

As I sat in the auditorium before the start of the trailers, I thought about how the owners had obviously named it "Lincoln Popcorn Palace" in order to sell more popcorn, which along with soft drinks forms the lifeblood of revenue for theaters like this. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted some popcorn, not only because I was hungry, but because I thought it would good to support the theater that way. After all, I'd only paid three bucks for the ticket.

When I got to the counter, I discovered to my further delight that at the LPP, they take the amount of your ticket off your first popcorn purchase. Since I'd chosen a medium (four bucks), it only cost me a dollar. As if I needed a further reason to like this place!

I got another shock when the movie started. During the opening credits, I learned that it was written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. He also co-produced it, when suggested right off the bat that no one else was willing to move the ball and finance this project. Not always a good sign, for a Hollywood movie.

What to say about Rodriguez. Well, on the one hand, I have to root for the guy. He was a student of my roommate in Austin when he used a deck of VCRs to make his first version of El Mariachi as a class project.

On the other hand, an Austinite can't fool an Austinite, and Shorts seemed to me to fall into the category of Austinesque material that wasn't meant to see the light of day to the outside world, as if it were made under the influence of too many psychedelic drugs without the steadying hand of a hard-assed outside producer to keep it in line.

The title, by the way, refers to the fact that the movie is narrated by one of the boy charactes as a series of "shorts" he has made with his digital video camera about the strange goings-on in his town (actually a Hill Country subdivision outside Austin).

As a kid's movie, this is just all over the map---fragmented, chaotic, and weird-in-a-not-always good sense. Also it's very disgusting, in a "giant booger come to life" sort of way.

The story falls smack into the genre of Dysfunctional American Family stories. Like Aliens in the Attic, which came out an the same time, the family dysfunction is used as an opening for the appearance of miniature extraterrestrials. That can't be a coincidence. There is something to this cultural meme that I have to keep my eye on.

Along the lines of American dysfunction, the climax of the movie features an evil corporate boss who has turned himself into a giant Transformers-type bot. He is menacing the townspeople who are also his employees. His daughter, who has turned herself into a giant wasp, is buzzing around him, trying to sting him and stop his rampage, all the while underscored by a soundtrack of a choir chanting the name of a popular Macintosh typeface.

What a bizarre picture of America in 2009. I couldn't help wondering what the hell Gary Cooper and Cecil B. De Mille who think of this. Would they even understand it? But that's Rodriguez, I guess.

I suppose I'm glad this movie was made. It's bizarre enough to be interesting. But it's not a kid's movie. I wouldn't recommend it to my nieces and nephews---maybe to my Austin friends, but they're weird, you know.

Verdict: well...uh...it's certainly different.