thesociety

Low budget films can flop if they start too slow, but this one has some pace. The story was very intelligent, not overly complicated. The plot was simple, believable and no obvious holes. The directing was very good, give Mr. Travis a real budget :). The acting was average to decent, except the wife (Wallander), who's expressions at times left me confused to irritated. Maybe that's what she was going for.

The best part of the movie is the concept and plot. I'm a fan of IT as well as lo-tech, and who doesn't think about what you would do if things went sour. This has it all, and watching it you might learn a few things. It really makes you think.

Not wasted time at all, I was pleasantly surprised and would watch it again if friends ask.

Why are they pushing me to get horny for a 16 year old? What the heck was that movie about? Why is ALL the physics so wrong? You can stand a fall from space but not (relatively) minor temperature or pressure fluctuations? You are light as a feather until you transform, when you can break asphalt with your footsteps? ALL the dialog is that rapid fire whining, typical of a Woody Allen movie. Most of all, when the action was happening, who was the bad guys and who was the good guys? If only you had let a Japanese writer do the story, maybe it would have made some sense. In a movie geared around action, the action was incomprehensible in the second half of the movie. Please, please, no sequel.

The movie starts out with its most intelligent joke, and goes downhill from there (pun intended). After that there's lots of potty humor and sexual situations. The beautiful women were the best part of the movie. Swear-word puns are not meant to be central idea jokes, but they try it here. The battle between the two groups in the local town (richies and poories) is an old tried and true setup, so how could it go wrong? Well, there is no reason to envy the "richies" nor any reason to feel sorry for the poories, so we can forget the central plot. The situational humor is all toilet or sexual aimed at teenagers, but only garners giggles, no true belly-laughs.

The only thing that salvages the comedy for this movie is the character humor, with the blind man providing some rehashed, but seldom used setups, and the black bar owner providing the formulaic "street" or "hood" humor.

OK, forget the jokes, there has to be some killer snowboarding shots since this was a commercial enterprise. Unfortunately, there was only 4 seconds of backdrop action that might be inspiring. The rest was all "B" grade tricks or worse. The big moment, where the main character rides "the goat", a man-killer ski run, did provide one shot where a small avalanche eats the stuntman. This was the best of the boarding in this movie. Any serious snowboarding fan will be disappointed with the quality of the stunts in the movie.

As for the technical aspects of the movie, the soundtrack was average, which surprises, as those snowboarding documentaries are regularly filled with quality tunes. You can catch a lot of editing mistakes and even though it was shot on a ski mountain, the majority of "scenery" shots failed to convey any sense of true size.

Overall, it MIGHT be worth watching if you have managed to turn your brain completely off and you like silicon breasts. Even then, you wont remember a thing from this one two days later.

Snowboarding is still waiting for it's definitive comedy, you'd do better to watch a snowboarding documentary for sure.