Rollercoaster

Remember being a teenager? The feeling of isolation from everyone and everything? The certainty that things are as bad as they can get and they won't get any better? Scott Smith certainly does, and he uses that knowledge to make the film "rollercoaster" one of the most disturbingly realistic looks at adolescence since "Kids" and "Dazed and Confused" in the mid-'90's.

Darren, Chloe, Justin, Stick, and Sanj are five kids from a Vancouver group home who break into a theme park that's gone out of business and whose equipment is about to be auctioned off. The point of this is Darren and Chloe--pregnant with Darren's child--have made a suicide pact and want their friends to be there with them when they jump off the roller coaster. Justin--Darren's younger brother--and Stick--a sociopathic bully who is secretly in love with Darren--don't like this plan, but feel powerless to stop it.

And that's what this film is really about: feeling powerless. The only way that the suicides can be averted is if these kids express their feelings honestly. Darren needs to tell Chloe he loves her. Justin needs to tell Darren he needs a brother. Stick needs to tell someone he's gay. But these kids only know what they've learned in the group home: hippie-dippie psychobabble alternated with sexual abuse. And so they vandalize cars and drink and smoke pot and Stick beats people up and Justin draws cartoons and they all rail about the meaningless of life.

Because this is a debut film (and because it is from my native Canada), it is riddled with flaws: we never learn much about Sanj, and a subplot about a pedophile security guard just doesn't work. But this is an impressive debut from Scott Smith. Imagine what he could do with a budget (but only as long as he keeps in touch with his inner suicidal teenager)! 7 out of 10.

Part of the success or failure of a movie is whether it can create a plausible sense of time and place. "Roller-coaster" succeeds. It effectively employs scenes that, under different circumstances, would disparagingly be called overused or uninspired, but here they seem fresh and compelling. It reminded me a lot of "Hurricane Streets".

Roller-coaster is the story of five seemingly aimless, conflicted teens from a group home in Vancouver who break into a defunct amusement park. Each of them has a problem or a secret the movie will eventually reveal. Mix all of this with the teens' confrontations with a security guard who at first bullies and torments them. Later it appears that, whether out of boredom or a change of heart, he befriends them. However, his kindness is just a means to an end.

Too many movies are guilty of playing down to the audience. When they show angry teens, the emotion seems contrived. However, "Roller-coaster" manages to make the anger, frustration, confusion, and boredom of growing up seem real. You develop sympathy for the characters because they don't come across as spoiled or irritatingly self-pitying.

Epilogue (added March 14, 2006:) I rented Roller-coaster this past weekend and was amazed at how faulty my memory is. Several years had gone by between the time I first watched the movie and did my review. Roller-coaster is actually better than I remembered. I would now say that it is in the same league as the incredible movie, "Mean Creek".

Not a disaster pic, not teensplatter fare nor a 3-D actioner, "rollercoaster" is a surprising ride about five very real kids who in one day at a closed-down fair come to terms with the everything that is wrong in their lives. Director Scott Smith turns a good tale here and gets his best performance from the explosive Brendan Fletcher, an actor to watch.

"rollercoaster" got great buzz at the Toronto Film Fest, won Most Popular Canadian feature at the Vancouver Film Fest, Best Canadian Feature at the Victoria Independent Film Fest and is nominated for a Leo award, along with Fletcher and Turton each for Best Actor.

I saw this movie it was like 2AM in the morning... Guess The Movie Network made a great choice by putting this movie at this hour of the 'night' cause if it had been during the day, 3/4 of the people watching would have zap to another channel for sure...

It is a good movie in the sense that this is not the usual type of movie when the two people fall in love, have children and live happy ever after... But this movie is SLOW MOVING... I mean, you could watch 5min, go elsewhere for 10min and then comeback and would be at the same place... Still, the end is tragic and the actors are pretty good...

7/10 not more!

Kudos to Scott Smith for getting this film made. It was beautifully shot and put together. The setting made for a visually stunning and poetic film about disenfranchised youth. The actors did such a convincing job of their roles that I was feeling their pain. Teen angst at its most depressing.