It's quite naive to believe that all short films are gems and pieces of cinematic high art, but this one is pretty good. This movie tries to evoke memories of 1980's childhoods, when kids played with action figures that spawned cartoons, and played video games with 8-bit graphics that were as advanced as most people could get, and parents were convinced that everybody under 25 was on the verge of destroying themselves.
Cody Estes plays as 10-year-old Anthony, a boy forced by his mother into a sleepover with a bully named Craig Randall(Rhett Damon). Her mother is convinced it's better for her to learn to make friends with a kid like him than to have no friends at all. Judging from this night though, we find it's hard to subscribe to such a notion. All the while there has been a rash of kidnappings that has been making the rounds on the local news media, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the situation... or so we're originally made to believe.
During this sleepover from hell, Craig spends every minute insulting and threatening him, and Craig's mother offers to serve him gross food that's supposed to be healthy. The special password that his mother gives him in case of any trouble proves to be of no use. Neither she, nor his stoner brother John seem willing to rescue him from this nightmare. His brother would rather spend time with his doofus of a girlfriend and the rest of his friends stealing a parking meter that they try to break into, presumably to use to score more drugs.
The only thing that seem halfway decent about the Randall Family is Craig's slightly older sister Lucy, played by none other than Jennette McCurdy. Lucy is anything but a kid in peril. She's a school-based actress in the making, who's on the prowl for boys, and likes Anthony partially because he pisses off Craig. In fact, it was through a Jennette McCurdy fan-site that I gained the opportunity to see this movie, and I'm glad I did. Sadly, the site is gone, but as of this writing, the movie isn't, and it should be seen.
