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5.0 out of 5 stars
Judas Wonderful, January 13, 2009
This review is from: On The Road With Judas (DVD)
I love this movie. It stuck in my head since I saw it at the Charleston International Film Festival. Can't wait to watch it again on DVD.
Nick Smith
On The Road With Judas
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Quirky Decent Movie, November 13, 2009
This review is from: On The Road With Judas (DVD)
A quirky, somewhat successful film, that wasn't really about much of anything.
This is an oddball film. It starts off about an author writing a book about his friends and then trying to sell it as a movie script. The author reads from his book and the film shows a cast that is supposed to be the real people in the book. And then the director adds a third story line of the actors who play the people in the film that is made from the book about the author's life. Does it sound convoluted? It is slightly, although in practice, it wasn't very hard or rewarding to follow. In essence the film is a book, within a documentary, within a film; where nothing happens, unlike Seinfeld, there was little humor here.
There was little chemistry between the cast members, the script never really allowed that to happen. There are a few stars, the pretty Amanda Loncor is a significant draw, Eddie Kay Thomas (
American Pie - Unrated (Widescreen Collector's Edition) and 'Til Death), and Kevin Corrigan (small parts in a ton of films,
Superbad (Unrated Widescreen Edition),
Pineapple Express (Single-Disc Unrated Edition)). Mostly the acting is good.
The film production values were interesting and made this a much better film. The film was cut in a strange way with jerky pacing. Between acts there were images of different objects suspended in front of a colorful background. At the end of the film it becomes clear why the director chose each object. Overall, camera work was good. Sound was recorded clearly. And there was little annoying random handheld camera work.
The film is not rated. I don't seem to recall any nudity. In fact the cover art is fabricated, Amanda Loncar sadly never wears that outfit. I would have to imagine there was some strong language, but don't specifically remember any. There is no violence or drug use. At most this is probably a PG-13 film.
I did enjoy the money making portion of the film. The author owned a computer business, selling stolen Macintoshes. How anyone could make money or get away with selling stolen computers seems a bit odd today. These were 1980 early 90's Macintoshes (I could not tell if they were SE/30, SE, 512K, or Plus - but they were the first gen Macs) that cost between three and five thousand dollars. Universities did not lock those computers up. Although heavy, they were very easy to grab and walk off with due to the single recessed handle in the back. There was a goof in the film when Eddie Kay Thomas tells one of his employees to go set a customer up with 2's. Unfortunately the 2 series Macs were a 2 part computer that they were never shown stealing; and those were very heavy between the CPU and the heavy monitor.
This is not a terrible film. The production values salvage a not so great script (the movie is supposed to be based on this book,
On the Road with Judas). The story is quirky, but not quirky enough. And Amanda Loncar would have made most scenes a lot more interesting.
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