engnorway

This film had a lot of cute moments and elements but as a whole didn't quite work for me. The gimmick of ham radio bringing two people together who have been exaggerating their lives to each other is interesting, but I didn't feel it was used to its potential.

The story, such as it was, felt like a bunch of sequences which should have been compressed into scenes. It didn't build strongly from scene to scene and got sidetracked with some of the atmospheric characters.

The ham radio characters were an interesting mix of people who should have been brought into the story more or been mostly eliminated. I liked all of the ham radio characters but they had little to nothing to do with the actual story.

The shot selection was a little strange at times as well. Some very good, fun moving camera shots followed by really poorly staged static shots made for a jarring effect. The director should never do anything which yanks the audience out of the world he has created, but in this film it happens far too often.

Everything felt like it was one step away from being ready to go. The script needed one more pass (maybe one rewrite and then a polish). Many of the scenes had shots that needed one more take. It needed one more cut with the editor.

But at the same time, being an independent filmmaker myself, I have a ton of respect that this filmmaker was able to get this to a watchable state.

I actually worked on this film and it was terrible watching it get made. In fact, I kept getting told that it would look and be so much better after it had been edited. Holy s**t was that wrong. Editing actually made it worse. The script sucked, the story sucked, the directing sucked, Larsen is worse than Keanu Reeves (hard to beat), the editing was childish... do I need to go on?

I would have given it a ZERO if possible.