Desert Blue

It took awhile to get going, but I ended up loving "Desert Blue" quite a bit. It was nice to see Sexton play a character without the need for anger-management, and I also liked Kate Hudson also. It wasn't the greatest, funniest or most touching movie I ever saw, but it was certainly better than most. I liked practically every character on some level, and I can't say that about a lot of movies. It made me think of "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" & "Bagdad Cafe" with a touch of "Firestarter".

"Desert Blue" With "Hurricane Streets". director Morgan J. Freeman burst onto the film scene with a sharp portrayal of bored inner city kids. Motivated by stealing, disarmed by love, the film was highly entertaining if a bit flawed. "Desert Blue" is Freeman's second film and represents his attempt to reach the opposite end of the spectrum. This time, instead of a population of millions, we now get a population of 97. The film is set in fictional Baxter, California, the home of the world's largest ice cream cone and the factory of burgeoning cola company Empire Cola. When a truck carrying Empire's secret ingredient has a massive accident and subsequent spill, the town in quarantined and put on alert for possible toxic contaminants. The town locals, who never thought about leaving their boring town before, now become antsy and think about life outside of Baxter. Kate Hudson ("200 Cigarettes") and John Heard play two travelers who were passing through Baxter during the spill. They become part of the quarantine and befriend the locals. Brendan Sexton III ("Hurricane Streets"), Casey Affleck ("Good Will Hunting"), Christina Ricci (Everything independent), and Ethan Suplee ("Mallrats") play the local kids. The ride around all day in ATVs and spend their nights drinking by the long aquaduct. Each kid harbors a long standing resentment to Baxter, and each kid expresses that uniquely. Ricci by anarchy, Affleck by ATV racing, Suplee has a long dream of becoming a deputy, and Sexton tries to keep the family business alive, thought it died a long time ago. "Desert Blue" is somewhat a comedy, somewhat a drama, and somewhat a commercial for poor actors. While it's nice to see old faces like Sara Gilbert ("Roseanne") and Michael Ironside ("Total Recall") in small supporting roles, the rest of the cast is laughably bad. I do understand that they might be trying to conveying boredom, but they do it just a touch too realistically. That leaves the film with a very awkward static atmosphere. The best moments of the film come when Freeman lets his actors and the plot get a bit silly. The film comes alive in scenes of Orange baseball, potato guns, and an ad-lib by Casey Affleck that made me laugh the rest of the picture. "Desert Blue" could have worked better if Freeman would have lit a fire under the plot. Too many scenes include drunken ramblings, proof that a film isn't trying. While I came out of the film with a good feeling about it, I wished the movie could've taken more advantage of it's possibilities. ------- 6

Interesting storyline with a few twists. Well done casting for the most part, including a very young Kate Hudson...Cinematography is spectacular for what's mostly just a desert, hence the title. Nobody seems to have caught one glaring example of a goof...Casey Affleck's character is riding a Honda 250S quad, but when confronted by the Sheriff, he gets very belligerent and says that his quad has an 8000cc turbocharged engine, when it plainly says on the tank 250S, which is 250cc! Its NOT turbocharged but normally aspirated 2 cycle engine, pre-liquid cooled version! 8000cc works out to 488 cu in, larger than the average V8 of today.

Still, all said, it's an entertaining movie if you're bored...

If you followed my reviews since I began to write them in the summer of 2017, you'd certainly have noticed that I am not the typical movie viewer. In fact I reviewed old movies, TV episodes of shows I love or of which I watch all episodes, modern movies, theater releases and bizarre movies of which nobody has heard except two or three who dare to review them. About bizarre movies, I might have seen various of them such as UNDER THE HULA MOON, SLEEPWALK and MOJAVE MOON and they amazed me for how bizarre they were. But DESERT BLUE is like they put those three movies and mixed them in a blender. Let's see what I mean, shall we?

Skye Davis (Kate Hudson) is a starlet that one day is riding with her dad and they end stranded in a town in the desert where they gradually meet the town's eccentric residents. Some of them are Blue Baxter who is obsessed with tube bombs, athlete Peter Kepler (Casey Affleck), professor Lance Davidson (John Heard) that often discusses about his classes even tho we are in the summer, and Cale who wants to build a water park in the desert because it was his father's dream.

The acting was good by all (Hudson, Affleck, Christina Ricci, Heard, Michael Ironside, Peter Sarsgaard, Aunjanue Ellis and Liev Schreiber) but the reason why I consider this movie strange is because the characters are all unlike others you'd see in other movies, the situations were often bizarre and especially the ending came by surprise, with the river that comes out of nowhere in the desert and then is used as a swimming pool... you just have to see it to believe it!

Highly recommended if you are fans of the odd like me or fans of the cast members and if you are in the right mood you'd end up liking it like I did.

Desert Blue is a very simple story of a spoiled Hollywood actress who, along with her dad (the impressive John Heard) gets stuck in a tiny town whose only pride comes from having the 'World's Largest Ice Cream Cone'. Once in the town, they are forced to stay because of the spilling of a mysterious Cola ingredient, and soon enough the spoiled actress falls for Blue.

The films is full of cliches, and the eccentric characters are not original. The plot is standard and the performances just par. Christina Ricci, as in most of her most recent films, plays a bitchy cynic, while all the other characters do little: they have a goal and chase after it.

Very disappointing stuff, unoriginal and a script which was not very sharp, treading over similar ground. John Heard is the best thing in the movie, and he's not in it very often as Morgan J. Freeman instead focuses on the youth.