Colma: The Musical

Flawed, certainly, but a bracing and energetic evocation of disaffected youth, and one of the most assured live-action musicals of the decade. This study of three young friends trying to escape dead-end futures in a dispiriting San Francisco suburb tracks along the same themes as, say, the Broadway musicals "Spring Awakening" and "American Idiot," but it's much less monotonous about conveying its theme of oh-I'm-so-young-and-sad-nobody-understands- me. And the soundtrack is varied and clever, the best musical moment being the "Cupid" number, the closest thing we'll get in 2006 to a great production number. Jake Moreno isn't the greatest actor, and the cinematography is muddy, and the idea that these three are living among the dead isn't sufficiently developed--we don't know how literally to take it. But writer-songwriter-actor H.P. Mendoza is clearly a very, very talented young man, and he catches familiar themes of youthful angst in fresh ways. And L.A. Renigen is a completely convincing wonderful-best-friend. All three kids are persuasively made up of good and bad traits, and we keep rooting for them even when they screw up. Made for nothing, it's an invigorating little movie, and at the end, when the credits thank "the town of Colma," you do get the impression that the whole town rallied behind these gifted young people to make their dreams come true. It's a nice feeling.

"Colma: The Musical" is now my all-time favorite film. It is about 3 friends fresh out of high school who have to figure out what to do next now that the structure of school is gone. The characters all ring true and the music is completely catchy. You will be humming along to the songs and have them stuck in your head for days after you hear them. On top of that the photography is fantastic. For a film made on a shoestring budget it is a huge achievement to have a film that looks this good and is so technically sound. I have seen plenty of low budget films over the years and you can tell that those films had to cut corners, but Colma looks and sounds like a much more expensive production. The performances of the leads are all fantastic. As the other review said the characters all have their flaws which is what makes them so three dimensional and gives the film its realism. See this film if you can, you will love it!

What would it be like to grow up in a town where the dead outnumber the living by a ratio of more than a-thousand-to-one? That's the case with Colma, a working-class community located just south of San Francisco that is more notable for its vast cemeteries than for anything related to the folk who actually live there. Dubbed The City of the Dead, Colma has a population of around 1500 above ground but over a million-and-a-half below, with roughly 75% of the town's land given over to tombstones and gravesites. That hardly seems the ideal setting for a movie musical, but then "Colma: The Musical" is not your average, run-of-the-mill, afraid-to-take-a-risk movie. Thankfully.

Three of the live people who call Colma home are Billy (Jake Moreno), an aspiring actor who's so straight-arrow he's never even had a drink; Rodel (H.P. Mendoza, who also co-wrote the screenplay), a gay prankster who fears coming out to his traditionalist dad; and Maribel (L.A. Renigen), a fun-loving free spirit, who often has to serve as mediator between the two guys. Recently graduated from high school, these three best buddies suddenly discover themselves on the brink of adulthood, trying to find their way in the world and wondering what the future holds for them.

Like a modern-day "Umbrellas of Cherbourg," "Colma: The Musical" is a cinematic operetta in which the characters define their relationships and express their feelings almost entirely through song. The score by Mendoza is lively and bouncy - if a trifle redundant at times - with lyrics that capture the fears and yearnings of the teenage heart with uncanny accuracy. In addition, this stylish and stylized movie features appealing performances, an endearing sense-of-humor, a hint of surrealism, and an artful use of that rarely employed, but often highly effective, tool of cinematic grammar, the split-screen.

With its youthful exuberance and anything-goes audaciousness, this quirky, independent feature has much of the feel of experimental regional theater about it. And the fact that it's still a trifle rough around the edges only adds to its authenticity and charm.

Filled with amusing and touching insights into this wonderfully complex and exciting thing we call "growing up," the movie understands the paradox that Colma, like all hometowns, serves both as the soil to plant one's roots in and as the place to break away from when the time is right. That's the lesson that these three likable young people learn in the end - just as the countless others, now residing in those graveyards, learned before them.

There's a simple emotional acuity at the heart of this 2007 coming-of-age musical. True, at a poverty row budget of $15,000, it has the production values of a direct-to-hotel porn movie, but first-time director Richard Wong and first-time screenwriter, songwriter and co-lead H.P. Mendoza manage to make something substantive from the tired premise of three close friends just out of high school and still reeling from painful romantic breakups and experiencing the social alienation that makes their respective roads to self-discovery bumpy ones. The acting feels stilted and the music rather derivative, but the film somehow makes it to the finish line through its honesty about how life is for social outcasts living in San Francisco's suburban necropolis. It's all the more forgivable for the enthusiastic effort that shows.

Shot on digital video in the real town of Colma, the movie opens with the three leads singing the "Rent"-inspired rave-up, "Colma Stays", which describes the anonymous small town with clever imagery. Lanky Jake Moreno plays Billy, the most inchoate of the trio, an aspiring actor who not only lands a sales job at the mall (Serramonte for all you SF locals) but also a supporting role in a local community theater production. He can't seem to get over his ex-girlfriend much to the chagrin of not only a smitten fellow actress but also close pal Maribel. With a cheery spark masking an uncertain melancholy, the cherubic L.A. Renigen makes party girl Maribel the earthbound glue holding the trio together just barely. Her shining moment comes with "Crash the Party", a dead ringer for Blondie's "Dreamin'", preceded by the film's funniest moment, a frozen-stare purchase of alcohol with fake IDs similar to the liquor store scene in "Superbad".

The most challenged and challenging character is Rodel, played with studied deadpan by Mendoza. Rodel is a gay poet and slacker, closeted from his traditional Filipino father and increasingly jealous of Billy's ability to move on with his life. He provides the film's most painfully realistic moments, as well as the most lacerating lines. Yet, his plaintive rendition of "One Day (Pt. 2)" provides genuine heart to the story's climactic moment. Not everything is wondrous. Moreno's nasal vocals, which make him sound like Bert on "Sesame Street", get wearing for the repetitive monotone. The barroom shanty scene runs too long, especially in ¾ time, and the "Deadwalking" duet between Renigen and Mendoza is marred by the arty Bergmanesque intrusion of ghostly couples dancing in the cemetery. The 2007 DVD offers a few surprising extras given the film's low budget - an infectious and insightful commentary track from Wong and Mendoza and fifteen minutes of deleted and extended scenes that were wisely excised from the final cut. Definitely a worthy first effort.

OK, as a Bay Area resident (albeit a transplant) and indie film maven, I couldn't stay away from seeing this film. I'm considerably older than the characters and I didn't grow up in the Bay Area so I didn't relate to the story (or maybe it was just the mediocre acting, which was overshadowed by the excellent singing). Still, I thought this movie was a guilty pleasure, kinda like your favorite Mexican restaurant or greasy spoon--you know you shouldn't, but you're glad you did.

Part of what makes this film fun is its foray into camp. Some of the musical numbers were just too over the top. Billy's musical declaration of love for "Tara" would have been sweet were it not for the two guys in the background scaling the facades of the buildings and each other. The real topper is where Tara releases the band holding her hair back so the breeze'll catch it--except she's got short hair and it hardly works. It's hard to take this seriously, particularly when you realize that Billy and Tara first met at a party where Tara's operatic "Is someone in the bathroom?" is responded to by Billy's "I'm taking a sh!!!!!!!t." The camp factor is equally present in the songs we see during the performance of "Friend Joseph" (some sorta spin-off of "Pal Joey"?), a show in which Billy performs. It's just "quirky quirky quirky, so damn quirky, quirky quirky...."

I guess it's a bit of a cinematic love letter to the area--there's even a shot of Maribel reading a book nearly every San Franciscan will recognize. I was at a screening that was followed by a Q&A with the director and one of the cast--there's a sequel in the offing if this is well-received. For some reason, I can't wait to see it. :-)