Movie: Remember the Daze

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

Fond Farewells

Plot Overview

It's 1999 and the final school day has arrived at Wilmington High in North Carolina. The students are seen cruising the streets, partying hardy, and tying up loose ends. Tori while high on shrooms laments to her friend Sylvia who's high with her, "I'm scared to leave home." Sylvia's soliloquy has it that:

This home that you think is home is really just the first one … it's like, we have this family, and we go off and we do stuff and eventually we start our­selves a new family, and then, our family will go off and start more families. And really it's just this whole chain reaction of like, creation, and then we try to classify it in stages so that we can find comfort in where we're at in that one particular moment in time but really there's no such thing as time and really we're all just walking talking patterns.

This pattern is confirmed by an unlikely source: Brianne (Melonie Diaz) and Dawn (Lyndsy Fonseca) closet Lesbian lovers. Dawn is bold and wants to let others know, but Brianne is cautious and insists they maintain their secret. The longer they wait to face the inevitable ("We can't do this forever") the worse it will be, so she'd rather break up sooner than later. They were not born lesbos but as best friends they fell into it and will return painfully to society's pattern.

The one who was "born great" is "yellow ass" Dylan a mulatto if not full Negro. He's awaiting the arrival of his destiny rather than working to achieve it. His one asset is his charm. How­ever, a young, grinning black adult male, especially in the South, will strike the Man as some­one who's up to some­thing more than one he wants to offer the keys of the kingdom to. He is very respectful of the girls as are hobos who can't offer them any­thing but admiration.

His obverse is Angie Ford (14) about to leave Middle School with perfect grades but a lousy attendance record and a worse attitude. She does not navigate the "real world" and is very hostile towards her dad and will probably drive away any potential suitors with her bitchiness. She could use some of Dylan's charm while he needs her better academics.

Aside from these two we can hope for the best in the rest despite their youthful foibles.

Ideology

Adults don't figure large in this picture and the students display wisdom beyond their years much as Solomon observed: (Prov. 30:24) "There be four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise:"

(Prov. 30:25) "The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer." One does well to develop good work habits early, in the summer of life. Stacey is a cheer­leader who has it that, "We practice more than foot­ball players and basket­ball players combined." Tori gives away her baby sit­ting experience by her ease in handling problem children. And Thomas (Charles Chen) with camera in hand is constantly taking photos. These good work habits will carry on through their lives. As novelist T.C. Boyle puts it: "The work ethic—once you had it, once it had been implanted in you, how could you shake it? Why would you want to?" (138)

Stacey's boyfriend Dylan by contrast has been suspended. His grand­mother kicked him out of her house, so now he's taken up clandestine residence in Stacey's basement. He spends his days in bed and won't even go up to the kitchen to make him­self a sandwich; he lets Stacey do it. To cap it off he doesn't give her the normal courtesies due a girl­friend but treats her as "the woman he comes home to." That boy needs a life.

(Prov. 30:26) "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks." Next is the all important location, to live in an area conducive to success in one's chosen field. If you're a computer nerd, go to Silicon Valley. In this movie a couple girls discuss their college options. One has gotten accepted at Brown but thinks, "Rhode Island sucks." Another has gotten into NYU but her mom thinks it would be a corrupting influence on her. But she's already not a virgin, she has a tattoo, and she regularly does drugs. What difference would it make? In both cases college is regarded as an opportunity to see some place new and meet new people. There is that.

Contrast them with the members of the punk rock band Over It. Two of them graduating are staying put to perform with the third member who has a year left of school. They are a rather mediocre band and would do well to keep their day jobs. The major decision for these high school grads is whether or not to go to college.

(Prov. 30:27) "The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands." The next tip for success is to cultivate an informal support network. Tori the baby sitter brings her friend Sylvia with her who has never sat before. When the parents return, Sylvia distracts them while Tori straightens up ("This place is a wreck.")

(Prov. 30:28) "The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces." That palace is subject to frequent dusting, but the spider just builds a new web when that happens. Disasters will come along by and by ("Maybe the Y2K will blow up the world.") When one of the mother's yard ornaments a plastic goose is purloined, her daughter takes hold of it when she finds it and puts it back.

Production Values

“” (2007) was written and directed by Jess Bond. Jess is a woman who populates the film with a plethora of characters hard to keep track of. It features Katrina Begin, Charles Chen, Melonie Diaz, Khleo Thomas, Lyndsy Fonseca, Amber Heard, Alexa Vega, Chris Marquette, and Shahine Ezell. The actors are slightly older than their parts, but they inhabit them well. They all did a good job.

MPA rated it R for pervasive drug and alcohol use, strong language and some sexual content—all involving teens. Two class­room scenes are included showing there's real learning going on. One looks like it's in a science lab and the other sounds like chaos theory philosophy. Runtime is 1¾ hours. The plot is wandering déclassé, along the lines described by author Edmund Wilson where:

the moving-picture producers … had swallowed up the theater in the thirties and by the mid-forties were making great inroads not only into the field of fiction but even into those of biography and history. It had always been the habit of literature to fall back on stock characters and stock situations; but in the traditional fables of stories and plays there had usually been a certain consistency: a villain, a virtuous woman, a tragic romantic hero could be counted on to keep up their rôles in accordance with accepted conventions. But Holly­wood had by this time discovered that the shadows that were printed on films did not need even this simple continuity. The choppy sequences flew by so fast, they faded from the screen so completely, that the audiences could be made content by merely being allowed to sit in a darkened and perhaps air-cooled house, watching back­grounds displace one another and human figures shift back and forth while the sound-track paid out a kind of dialogue which was similar to that of the balloons in the mouths of the characters in comic strips. No logic, no firmness of out­line of even the most elementary sort, were required at this stage of the films— (376–7)

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

This is a secularized school life although some­one does say, "We're the proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." There's an implication that one set of parents at least disapproves of homo­sexuality perhaps on religious grounds. It's a party movie with all that implies. Knock your­self out.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day. Suspense: Predictable. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.

Boyle, T. Coraghessan. The Harder They Come. Copyright © 2015 by T. Coraghessan Boyle. New York: Harper­Collins Pub., First edition. Print.

Wilson, Edmund. "The Milhollands and Their Damned Soul," published in Memoirs of Hectate County. Copyright © 1942, 1943, 1946, 1959 by Edmund Wilson. New York: L.C. Page & Company, 1959. Print.