journal features

movie review - About a Boy

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2003.04.14

I was a bit leery about this one, but it turned out to be quite worthwhile. It's about a man who does nothing with his days other than spend the royalties from his dad's Christmas song and fritter away the 'units' of his day (a unit is roughly half an hour). He meets the lonely son of a suicidal woman, and the two of them form a friendship. This is a character movie with real characters, and it's a damn good change from the usual tales where someone gets magically shown the way through finding the love of his life or some crud ("that cherished myth").

It's an odd film, with strange pacing and some grindingly realistic bits thrown into the otherwise movie-surreality that marks the medium. I recommend it.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them. They only favored music that I specifically and particularly hated, and I wanted them dead. Suddenly, there was another avenue. I started hearing my stuff coming out of bars and then it started to happen little by little -- a movie song here or a TV ad there.

—Iggy Pop