You Are Here

I bumped into this on one of the movie channels the other day. I wasn't expecting much, but I ended up being surprised at how much I like it. I don't know why the critics buried this movie. The story line is strong and it was well acted (especially Laren German). The directing and editing was top notch. The story is told in bits and pieces from the perspectives of all the characters involved. This format usually makes me dizzy, but it was done so well, the movie spun along without a glitch or a boring moment. The movie is well worth your time if you like to watch young beautiful actors in a contemporary setting shine at their craft.

Can I just, first of all, mention just how hard finding this movie online is? I mean, it's virtually almost non-existent anywhere and I had to dig deep and wide to find a copy of it. If you're searching for a copy of the movie, one hint that I'm sure will benefit you a lot in your searches is to remember that it seems to go by the 'You Are Here' title in most places than it does by the 'Spin' title - and 'You Are Here' does seem to be a more fitting title than does 'Spin' by the way. Also important to note is that the movie exists in multiple copies of varying lengths. Ultimately, I managed to get and watch a copy that is 1 hour, 17 minutes, and 51 seconds long.

That said, I'm not sure that the effort I put in to find a copy of the movie was well worth it from the perspective of the movie as a whole. This is because while it aspires to be a comedy, it's more or less a hit and miss situation when it comes to actually making you laugh. Indeed, most of its "comedic" moments fail to deliver either due to their blandness and/or unnecessary exaggeration or due to their being clichés. I did however enjoy its vignette format and the suspense that it raised and managed to maintain for most of it although the ending was, to say the least, unclimactic.

About the performances, most of them were either average or below average. Notable exceptions to this were the performances by Katie Cassidy (playing Apple) and Lauren German (playing Cassie). Focusing on Cassidy particularly, her portrayal of a confused and somewhat stressed and lonely Apple is golden in its authenticity, emotional presence, and grip. It harkens to Cassidy's memorable performances in some horror notables like When a Stranger Calls (2006), Black Christmas (2006), A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), and Kill For Me (2013).

Besides Katie Cassidy and Lauren German, Amber Heard's brief appearances in two scenes is also noteworthy. She plays Amber, a former actress and the wife of Tony Russo (Michael Biehn), a hitman for a drug cartel. In the two scenes in which Amber appears, it is clear that Tony has been cheating on her. As such, she decides to do the same to him. While these appearances by Amber Heard are too brief to make firm judgments about her performance, the energy and presence that she displays while she's on camera leave no doubt that she would have done a better job than other performers were she given a more primary role in the movie. So, and as I have felt watching some other early roles of Heard's - such as in the pilot episode of Jack & Bobby (2004), in SideFX (2004), and in Friday Night Lights (2004) - I cannot help but lament at how under-utilized her talent was in this movie. I think, for instance, that she would have made a much better match for Cassidy's character than did German. This is especially so given that it is clear from Heard's brief appearances that by that stage of her career, she had grown immensely into a more confident and commanding force of an actress. It is no wonder then that 2007 is also the same year that Heard got to feature as a main character in a TV series (Hidden Palms) for the first time in her career.

Comparing Cassidy and Heard, it's a testament to Heard's talent that while the career trajectories of these two similarly aged actresses have been largely similar and while Cassidy has appeared in many more iconic movies and series than Heard has, Heard has gained more professional recognition in terms of Awards and Nominations than Cassidy and she did manage, unlike Cassidy, to get to feature in a prominent supporting role in a record-breaking blockbuster movie (Aquaman, 2018), a featuring that, by all indications, would have been her breakthrough role into a future Oscar nomination or win had it not been for her ex-husband's abuse of her in their relationship and on the global stage. I for one am looking forward to Heard's resumption of her career and I believe that her talent and character are such that we will get to see more of her on the silver screens for years to come. But I digress.

Lastly, it will also be of interest to some to note that this movie has its own share of sexist tropes, romanticizes Hollywood's drug culture, overly simplifies its female characters, and has a severe under-representation of non-White characters.

Because of its multiple problems as described, I would have rated it with a 3. However, it is Cassidy's magnificent acting together with Amber Heard's presence that have made me settle on a 6 for it. I recommend the movie to comedy buffs with huge senses of humor and to those who love suspenseful vignette-style movies. I would also recommend it to those interested in studying Amber Heard's career and to fans of Katie Cassidy. Besides those among these audiences, I'm afraid that this movie has little to offer to anyone else.

Bloke wakes up, slightly hungover. He has slept with a girl last night that he didn't mean to, as he really likes another girl. He phones his friend and tells him so. The story then progresses in long chunks that are technically flashbacks. Then other people he's interacted in start to phone each other and tell their sides of the stories in flashback form. Soon you don't know what has happened, what is going to happen and who is telling who's side of the story.

What is Spin? I have no idea. It steals elements from dramas, bawdy American Pie-esque teen comedies, hard-hitting adult-themed stories and then tries to overlay one story over another, hopping backwards and forwards in time.

Spin tries so hard to be hip, trendy and modern. Sadly, it's just a complete mess.

If you like films that are made up of a series of smaller stories that overlap, watch 11:14 (starring Patrick Swayze and Hilary Swank) - that's the one for you, it's filled with clever, witty dialogue and story lines that make sense.

They just swear a lot in Spin.

(Michael Biehn, you must really be hard up to star in this - you're worth sooo much more).

Well... its a bit rare to watch a movie so simple and so interesting at the same time. I caught this one while channel surfing, and it was half-way through already, however the screenplay really did not let me go anywhere else....! Later I had to download the movie (yes i said download, cos its very difficult to get international movies in India), and saw the whole thing.

Though the story does not make much sense.. you will love watching whatever is unfolding on the screen. The dialogues are crisp for most of the film, the selection of music is awesome, the screenplay is top-notch!

Like the other reviewers I stumbled across this movie. I honestly didn't expect to enjoy it, but ended up being drawn into the storyline. I guess my sense of humor must be out of step with most current comedies because they're just not funny to me. It's easy for a movie to make me cry and very hard for a movie to make me laugh. So it's high praise when I say that I laughed more with Spin than I have at any movie I've seen in the last ten years. Simply thinking about certain scenes the next day would cause me to break out in uncontrolled laughing.

The version I saw was the under 80 minute TV edit. It's the story of one night at a club and the morning after from the point of view of six different characters all young (twenty-three years old ----- so we're told in the opening scene), beautiful and living in Southern California. The movie starts out slow, but it grows on you. Somewhere in the second vignette I was hooked. In the end, it's a tightly written script where all the pieces fit together wonderfully and with great humor. Spin is a screwball comedy for the modern era but has some moments of pathos in dealing with relationships.

In the first vignette, we're introduced to a character played by fifty-something Michael Biehn with one of the twenty-three year old girls. I'll admit that repulsed me, and I almost changed channels at that point. No matter how often Hollywood goes to the well of much older men with much younger women, I think that water's undrinkable. But it turns out that Michael Biehn was the hidden gem of this movie. I've only ever seen Biehn in serious, intense roles. I don't think I've seen him play any part other than a soldier or a cop (oh, and one sociopathic cowboy). This was the first comedy I've seen him in, and Michael Biehn has a real gift for comedy with impeccable comic timing. Watching his performance in Spin made me regret that Biehn's been so typecast in non-comedic roles.

The movie's focus is on the twenty-three year old characters, and I found the young actors to be very interchangeable, particularly the females. I didn't think any of the young actors put their own stamp on their characters so that I couldn't imagine anyone else playing that role. Pretty much any other actor with that physical type could have played the role, and I wouldn't notice the difference.

But I'll give chops to the older guy. Michael Biehn's been acting for longer than most of the young actors have been alive, and experience counts for something.

Overall, the strength of Spin was definitely from its script, so kudos to Henry Pincus for writing the funniest movie I've seen in many a year.