The Rage in Placid Lake

Characters are believable, yet stretched to be perfectly bizarre. I saw the film at an Indie Film Fest at a college where my mum works and the whole room just kept laughing. I thought my sides were going to burst!

This is definitely on my list of favorites now.... I just want to give it a hug.

Oh... you have to see the movie. You just have to. You will be laughing so hard throughout you won't be able to hear half of the lines and you will have to see the whole thing over again. I think i might re-watch it tonight and then have a bunch of people over to watch it again.

Not to be confused with the mediocre creature feature "Placid Lake," "The Rage in Placid Lake" is a quirky romantic comedy, a fun corporate satire and a weighty coming-of-age tale. Placid Lake (Benny Lee) is a ridiculously precocious high schooler raised by new age hippie parents and is constantly picked on by bullies. In an act of "fearlessness," Placid presents a brutally honest student video at school which assuredly lands him in the hospital. Recovering from his wounds, Placid realizes a change needs to be made and formulates a plan to become normal to the disappointment of his best friend Gemma (Rose Byrne).

Originally a play entitled "The Cafe Latte Kid" by Tony McNamara, the big screen adaptation is witty, charming and strangely reflective. Indie rocker Benny Lee's occasional voice over gives the script some tongue-and-cheek humor and the story becomes unpredictably fresh as Placid's inner psyche evolves. His unique charm and unconventional good looks work in his favor as he walks the line between adolescent naivety and adulthood cynicism. Likewise Rose Byrne makes Gemma uniquely fun as a prudish overachiever constantly egged on by her stepfather. The real standouts however are the supporting cast members. Miranda Richardson and Garry McDonald tread the waters well as a hippie couple with marital problems. Though originally introduced as a caricature both manage to make the best of their parts and transcend into fleshed out characters with motivations that aren't always virtuous but human. Likewise Saskia Smith and Christopher Stollery make the best of their screen time as Placid's sexually charged, emotionally distant co-worker and his boss respectively.

Many might find the humor a bit different in this film. In most satires, characters are a logical extension of the subject up for satire but after the first third of the film most characters are treated with some level of civility. Placid's corporate boss for example is first seen as a soulless task master but near the end of the movie you find he's just a person who has lost himself in a corporate world. Unfortunately this movie's freshness starts to fade away in the third act as story holes are quickly plugged in like so much spackle on drywall and Placid receives his happy Hollywood ending.

"Rage in Placid Lake" evokes comparisons to other teen comedies like "The Breakfast Club" and "Charlie Bartlett" which attempt to mix laughs with jolts of cinematic seriousness. It certainly succeeded in the former, but not in the later. Although not as scrabbled as "Charlie Bartlett," "The Rage in Lake Placid" isn't as composed as it should be. The jokes are sometimes laugh-out-loud funny but those moments are few and far in between and the love story lacks evolution. At points it seemed Rose Byrne could have been replaced with a male friend and most of the plot points would be the same throughout (though the end kiss would be a little awkward).

I would recommend this to anyone of sound mind and body but not strongly enough to warrant required watching status. Though it has a uniqueness that sticks with you after the credits roll, it only raises to the occasion of date night filler.

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I found this movie to be pretty good. While the jokes weren't hilariously funny, they were still worth a fair few laughs.

The acting was quite good, surprisingly including the singer Ben Lee;

The cinematography worked quite well with the general mood. Some of the camera work was imperfect, but that sort of added to the character of the film. Some of the shots were actually quite good

So it didn't do so well in the box office. It wasn't the sort of film you associate with box office takings. This is a film that makes you laugh and then makes you think. I really like that, and I love how much I felt for the characters at the end. For me, that character empathy is what makes a movie good, not how many dollars it made

Overall, an interesting film that throws an interesting twist on the teen movie and the Australian comedy

Despite the misleading title, The Rage in Placid Lake is not some ropey horror movie sequel about teenagers being chomped to death by a malformed alligator. It is a semi-satirical, light-hearted but intelligent coming-of-age comedy following the exploits of the cruelly named Placid Lake. Placid did not have a 'conventional' upbringing. His parents are two of the most over-the-top, but yet entirely believable hippies ever committed to celluloid. Their 'new age' methods of child rearing subject young Placid to humiliation time and time again, but un be known to him, give him an inner wisdom and strength to deal with life's little problems. Unfortunately, Placid doesn't concern himself with life's little problems, he rises above them. Placid leaves school and begins to worry about life's bigger problems, such as what to do with his life. Without giving away too much of the story, Plaicd formulates a plan which involves re-inventing himself in the quest to fit in, lead a conventional life and annoy the hell out of his parents in the process. Of course Placid is far from conventional and it seems the harder he tries to be 'normal' the greater the challenge becomes. The gags in this film are a mix of satirical jibes at the modern society we live in, observational humor about the trials of growing up, and some good old fashioned slapstick that the Aussies do so well.

Ultimately, this film is a great coming of age tale of a young man coming to terms with the world and himself. The acting is fantastic, Ben Lee is entirely convincing as the dead-pan and slightly unhinged Placid. His parents are over-the-top caricatures, but do a splendid job of convincing us just how well meaning (but entirely mad) they are. Rose Bryne is fantastic as Placid's foil/love interest/best friend/sole mate, and really doesn't get the screen time she really deserves. There a plenty of smaller character parts which also stand out, all contributing to this wacky, but believable film. This is a film for anyone who ever felt they didn't quite fit in, or anyone who didn't want to fit in. 8.5/10

Aha! After last week's debacle with American Wake, I was starting to worry that the Reel 13 Indies were going to be a series of below average films that didn't receive more significant distribution for a reason (i.e. they stunk). But HERE - here they have found a diamond in the rough – that long lost indie gem that slipped through the cracks and failed to reach a wider audience. This, of course, leads me to two questions: 1) Who at Fox Searchlight or Focus Features went to somebody's bar mitzvah instead of a screening of this film allowing Film Movement to pick it up? and 2) Why in the hell didn't Reel 13 debut with this film instead of American Wake? (Sidenote: Another option would have been to air it on 2/2/08 when Reel 13 is showing Rebel Without a Cause – this would have been a PERFECT companion piece for that – why aren't they looking at content when pairing these films???) The first thing you need to know about The Rage in Placid Lake is that it's an Australian film. The second thing you need to know is that it stars that country's quirky rock/folk icon, Ben Lee (you may have noticed that I recently added one of his songs to the MySpace page – it's pretty good…). The film starts out with a five year-old Placid Lake being sent to school in a dress by his granola, new wave bisexual mother (Miranda Richardson) to challenge the other students' preconceived notions of sexuality or something like that. It's a very clever idea and very efficient – with a few simple images, it establishes Placid, his family and the series of problems he is likely to have when he grows up into Ben Lee.

The film is full of moments like this – visual, clever ideas that optimize screen time to push the story forward (There is a great dream scene in which Placid plays his own therapist and they discuss his life predicament and action steps to resolve it – more films need to be creative like this when it comes to exposition). There are not many belly laughs, per se, but the film is consistently amusing, often inspired and always irreverent. The script is really strong – structured without feeling manipulative and resisting the urge for sitcom-type "set-'em-up, slam it home" humor. There are a few minor contrivances (Placid's corporate job interview is a bit too easy) and there is a heavy reliance on voice-over, especially in the beginning (I am particularly biased against the over usage of VO – that and dissolves – but I won't get into that here. We could be here all day…), but on the whole, the film works on many levels.

Ben Lee is amiable and pleasant as the titular character. He has the charm, if not the chops. If you're looking for chops, look no further than Miranda Richardson as Sylvia Lake, reminding us why she was the Brit femme du jour of the early 90's when she received two Oscar nominations in a three year period (for Damage and Tom and Viv) before she faded into occasional obscure roles on BBC TV movies. Hopefully that won't be the same fate for Rose Byrne, who has the unique distinction of being the best thing in two very bad movies (Troy and Wicker Park). Byrne gives her best performance to date as Placid's genius best friend, Gemma. Byrne can't hide her sexiness (she was innocuously sexy as both a spunky slave girl and a psychotic stalker in the previously mentioned films), but she can (and does) layer it with intelligence, wit, (appropriate) pathos, and an emotional confusion that, to some degree, stems from her inability to reconcile her smarts with her sexuality.

The most memorable part of the film for me, though, involves the performance of Christopher Stollery as Joel, Placid's supervisor at his corporate insurance job. This has as much to do with Stollery's impeccable delivery and timing as it does the very concept behind the role itself. Joel becomes an unwitting, somewhat accidental surrogate father/big-brother to Placid - almost like a corporate soothsayer, whose advice is generally as much a surprise to the giver as it is to the recipient. This is a great, original narrative device invented by writer/director Tony McNamara who uses it consistently and effectively to steer the story in one direction or another.

As excited as I am that Reel 13 discovered and aired this film, I am somewhat appalled that it didn't receive domestic theatrical distribution. This isn't just a good little indie film – this is a good film in general and had it been released in 2003, it would have stood a good chance of making a few top ten lists that year, including my own. I understand that Ben Lee was less of a sell-able commodity at the time and that Australian films are not in high demand, but successes like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Bend it Like Beckham and Napoleon Dynamite prove that there is a market for more varied entertainment. We can only hope that the next hidden gem like The Rage in Placid Lake gets the kind of attention it deserves.