Dec

9

Armageddon for Andy.

Filed Under Film | 1 Comment

As light-hearted dork-stalks-cheerleader prom-centric high school films go, Armageddon for Andy starts out sub-middle-of-the-road. Competent, but not all that funny, and definitely seen-that-before. There’s a nuclear-war-is-coming subplot that simmers in the background, but it doesn’t really provide much purpose at first. Some of the characters, especially Andy’s agoraphobic Spanish-language-television-watching mother, work well; others, like the Dragon Lord Eugene not so much.

But in the second half, Andy sporadically comes alive as it embraces its creepiness and callousness. The blackmail, the rejection, and the feeling that sexual assault is all but inevitable, if unlikely, loom monstrously. And as it progresses toward the ending, the situation grows ever more fucked up, and is charming for that progression.

The pacing leaves something to be desired. Some of the actors played ham-fisted caricatures, although Kristin Caldwell and Marcy Rylan charmed. [Aside: note to costuming...mistake to have Adeline lose the glasses for the transformation; cliched and hot-minimizing.] And the film focuses too often on peripheral characters and story arcs, ostensively for comic relief or contrasting echoes, at the expense of the building tension between the two leads. But there is something deeply satisfying about what Andy was trying to accomplish, if not the finished product. Worthy effort, Eugene and company. B-


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  1. Armageddon for Andy » Blog Archive » Yodelling Llama reviews “Armageddon for Andy” on January 26, 2008 8:03 am

    [...] Yodelling Llama [...]