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Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Alabamah: Aspiring special effects
artist Green's (Bret Harrison) mum (Ashley Laurence) falls in love and
marries construction builder Earl (Kevin Gage) - but Earl soon proves to
be a violent alcoholic who beats up even his best friends and gives Green
a hard time. When he beats up mum badly though, Green gets so enraged that
he throws him out, and for a while, Earl stays away for good ... until he
one day seizes the opportunitywhen Green's not home, kidnaps mum, and
throws her out of his speeding car, effectively killing her. Green wants
retaliation, and that's when his skills as makeup artist come in handy:
Masked as Earl, he destroys Earl's cousin Rusty's (Josh Todd) car, the
love of his life, and makes sure Rusty sees him. Upon this, Rusty packs
his gun, drives over to Earl's house and shoots him dead ... In another
narrative thread, Green falls love with a girl, Angevin (Laura Prepon),
who says she's an actress (she's only been in a couple of skinflicks it
later turns out), but he soon is at odds with Angevin's mother (Shannon
Eubanks), an active member of the church, who opposes his skills as a
special effects artist and especially the haunted house he's
working on for Halloween. Eventually, she accuses him of having
spraypainted the church (it was Earl's work it later turns out) and has
him thrown into jail. While he's in, she destroys his haunted house with a
slegehammer, leaving him a broken man when he comes out again. Mrs Duvet
though has problems of her own, she can't accept her husband's death, and
now carries a pillow with her as a sort of stand-in. And eventually,
Angevin makes her see the light, and mummy finally hands her over her
inheritance, a bundle of money. Green and Angevin plan to go Hollywood
together to start their respective careers in the movie business, but when they
meet at the bus station, Angevin confesses to Green she can't come (who
knows why), but gives him her bundle of money. Partially based
on the life story of its director/writer Robert Hall, one of Hollywood's
leading special effects makeup artists, this coming-of-age drama has
several interesting narrative threads - but that doesn't keep the film
from being nothing short of dead boring, because as skilled as Robert Hall
might be in the field of special effects, as a writer and director he
lacks any and all talent - simply put, he totally lacks the ability of creating
suspense or atmosphere, and the dialogue of the film is as stilted as it
is clichéd. Add to this a charisma-free lead actor like Bret Harrison,
between whom and leading lady Laura Prepon (one of the few highlights of
the film) there is absolutely no chemistry, Ashley Laurence's annoyingly
fake slang (her performance otherwise isn't bad though), and an annoyingly
blunt series of backwoods clichés, and you are left with a total waste of
time.
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amazon.co.uk
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eThaiCD.com
find Lightning Bug at adultvideouniverse.com
