Paranoid Park Review

Paranoid Park 2008

Elephant with the shooting spree replaced by clips of kids skateboarding


Were reviewers who gave this film good ratings on drugs, or are they just stupid? It's no surprise that Time Out New York liked it, but the New York Times too?

Director Gus Van Sant, who made such gems as Drug Store Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), has lost it. First time actor (you could tell) Gabe Nevins plays Alex, a skater kid who accidentally kills a train yard security guard one night. He feels guilty, worries the cops are after him, breaks up with his annoying girlfriend, writes a letter to make himself feel better, and skates from place to place. He also walks a lot.

That's the movie. If you saw the trailer, you saw everything worth watching, but in a condensed form that made it look interesting. Running only 85 minutes, it feels at least 3.7 times as long.

As I watched the backs of Alex and his friends skating and walking for seemingly endless durations, I had the nagging feeling that I've seen this before. But where?

In Last Days (2005), Van Sant pointed his camera at the back of a depressed rocker who wandered around the house and nearby woods, mumbling to himself. This was interesting, particularly for Kurt Cobain aficionados.

Elephant (2003) also had a lot of walking, through school halls mostly. This was also interesting, because we got to see the layout of the school and its surrounding area. Additionally, Van Sant followed around multiple characters, and switched from one to another in cool ways, furthering the plot and providing some character development.

Paranoid Park, on the other hand, seems like a hodgepodge of clips from Elephant (Alex's back looks like that of any of the first time actors' in Elephant, and hell, it was filmed at the same location) interspersed with skating footage. There's no point to all the walking and skating. Then there's the repetition of the walking and skating. Not only did I see this in Elephant, I saw it in Paranoid Park too, over and over again.

The repetition, you might say in the movie's defense, serves to show how Alex remembers the events surrounding his accidental murder of the guard. He's writing a letter, and as an awkward teenager, who by his own account sucks at creative writing, is prone to repeating himself. Moreover, he's avoiding recounting the death of the security guard because it's traumatic.

If you'd say this, you would be wrong. Who remembers walking to places? No one. And not even an imbecilic teenager would write, "I walked, then I walked some more, then I skated, then I walked some more." No, such writing can only be in Van Sant's artsy fartsy screenplay. And if the book by Blake Nelson was the same way, then the book sucks too.

But, you might interject, Van Sant is trying to be realistic--this is how life is, with lots of walking and nothing happening.

If I want to see what real life looks like, I won't spend $11.50 on a movie when I can walk behind people and look at their backs for free.

If it's trauma and denial the movie strives to show, Alex's burning of the letter and suddenly feeling good about himself at the end is not realistic at all. And who's that girl that tells him to write the letter? Lisa Simpson?

And what's up with the casting? All the kids suck at acting. More realism? Their awkward acting, as opposed to acting awkward, makes the movie all the more fake.

None of this is entertaining. Nor is it in any way enlightening.

If you really want to see this movie, wait until your pretentious David Foster Wallace reading friend buys the DVD.