Fat Kid Rules the World

FAT KID RULES THE WORLD        B                     

USA  (98 mi)  2012  d:  Matthew Lillard           Official site  

Though structurally quite different, this film bears a resemblance to the Stephen Chbosky novel and movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), especially how kids project themselves into a world of fantasy, where Troy, Jacob Wysocki from Terri (2011), a nerdy and oversized high school kid has been an outcast for years, now fat, ostracized and alone, where his home life is worse after his mother died, leaving him and his younger brother to fend for themselves with their Dad, Billy Campbell, something of a Marine drill seargent, an overly strict father whose kids actually call him “sir.”  The film plays out like a working class fantasia immersed in the gritty reality of Seattle, a place where too many wayward kids end up as runaways or homeless.  The fantasy element is immediately apparent, as Troy is standing on the curb imagining his own successful suicide jumping in front of a bus, then acting it out in real life except some kid comes out of nowhere to rescue him, literally tackling him just inches away from the oncoming bus, saving his life.  What’s interesting about this Good Samaritan kid, Matt O’Leary as Marcus, is he immediately asks for $20 for saving his life, something that makes the poor kid feel even lower.  Despite the occasional intersect, both actors play dual leads throughout the film, as their lives are definitely on different tracks.  Troy at least has a home and something resembling a stable life, even as an outcast, while Marcus has already gotten kicked out of school, kicked out of house and home, and kicked out of his own band, a punk group called P.O. I., which doesn’t leave him many options, so he kind of hangs onto this fat kid who’s too insecure to tell him to get lost.  Marcus invents an entire fantasy world around Troy, pretending to be friends where they play in a rock band together with Troy as the drummer, occasionally crashing at his house, as he literally has nowhere else to go.       

Mike McCready, lead guitarist for Pearl Jam, writes most of the musical score, creating a kind of offscreen punk musical soundtrack that’s not like anything else out there, yet it whole-heartedly embraces the interior world of a couple of outcasts, both angry at how the world treats them.  While Troy is a gentle giant, a soft-spoken kid with a large body, but meek as a lamb, afraid to talk to girls or even find a friend, Marcus is a completely energized, hard corps punk rocker, but he’s such a rebellious fuck-up and so unreliable that everyone’s abandoned him literally ages ago, as he’s so disappointingly unreliable that he’s screwed people over so many times until now they’re sick of him.  But for Troy, time spent with Marcus feels like an actual adventure, a continual spiraling-out-of-control road trip, something he’s never had as he barely leaves the house, spending gobs of time playing video games on his computer, apparently communicating online with other computer geeks.   While Marcus inevitably gets into trouble, breaking into his own family’s house, stealing whatever he can find, including pills from medicine cabinets, where life is a continual quest for getting high, the problem is he often ends up sleeping on the street, continually running out of options.  When Troy’s Dad lets him shower and have a meal, the guy eats like a feral animal that hasn’t seen food in months.  The contrast in lifestyles is the crux of the movie, as Marcus is continually driving Troy to be in a punk band, as if this is every guy’s ambition.  Initially Troy is literally swept off his feet in a rush of unbridled energy, where at least occasionally he actually runs into cute girls who happen to like underground music and visit punk clubs, where Marcus grabs the onstage limelight, a guy that literally feeds off the attention, if only momentary. 

But like everybody else, Troy gets lied to and hoodwinked by Marcus, who makes promises he can’t keep, never showing up when he’s supposed to, and letting him down time and again.  Troy’s attempts to learn how to be a drummer are pathetic at best and his first onstage experience turns into a brief momentary disaster that instantly goes viral on YouTube.  While Troy is humiliated and embarrassed, he’s dumfounded at all the attention he receives afterwards, where any recognition, even negative, is more than he’s ever received before.  This kind of drives him to take himself more seriously, where  he spends endless hours learning how to play, where he’s never very good, but just the thought of playing onstage feels like a dream.  Of course, Marcus continually lets him down and screws him over, bringing heavy doses of unwelcomed negativity into their relationship, most all of it coming from a drug-addled brain that’s nearly fried, eventually crashing on the street in a frightful mix of overdose ecstasy and panic, where each guy’s life is nightmarishly spiraling in opposite directions.  Troy’s decision to be there for the recovering kid in the hospital speaks volumes, while Marcus remains the same reckless fool who starts hoarding all the mind-altering pills.  While there’s nothing remotely pretty about any of this, the edgy tone of never being accepted in life comes through loud and clear, where kids all-too-often are afraid to fail, which prevents them from even trying, where they just accept their miserable solitary existence.  This film’s upbeat tone is expressed through the anger and aggression of punk music, where no one needs to be like anybody else, or care what others think of them, as life can get ugly, as imperfect people are prone to making mistakes.  Jacob Wysocki and Matt O’Leary both excel at conveying the pent-up confusion in a teenagers’s life, where you want so much more than what you have, which is an unending emptiness.  Perhaps the film is overly optimistic, but it interestingly has a kind of PUMP UP THE VOLUME (1990) feel where people can come out of the shadows of teenage obscurity.       

Terri

TERRI                     B         

USA  (105 mi)  2011  d:  Azazel Jacobs

The director is the son of experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, but zeroes in on a fairly likeable Sundance indie feel with this film about a teenage social outcast Terri (Jacob Wysocki) who is continually teased about his enormous size.  Little is made of the fact that he also wears pajamas around town (“because they fit”) as well as to public high school without anyone raising objection, which by itself suggests a certain tolerance for the character, which just doesn’t have the feel of credibility, as kids themselves would likely raise an uproar about broadening the acceptable dress code standards for one kid while adults would be sending him off to see the shrink.  Instead the film focuses in on his gently attentive daily routines, where he lives with his eccentric and senile uncle, Uncle James (Creed Bratton), who has an extensive collection of books and old record albums, occasionally showing the clarity to impressively play the piano, much to the delight of Terri, who is something of a quiet recluse himself, used to taking care of him, making sure he takes his medicine, watching his moods and his behavior so he doesn’t do something he’ll regret, and also putting him to bed at night.  His uncle is friendly enough, but has a tendency to easily forget things.  With the film opening on their morning routine, making sure his uncle has what he needs before he sets out for school, it’s easy to see why Terri has a history of arriving late, which gets him sent to the Principal’s office, none other than the always offbeat John C. Reilly as Mr. Fitzgerald, who welcomes him as a buddy, suggesting they meet regularly just to see how things are going. 

With Mr. Fitzgerald, one is never sure who’s weirder, him or the misfit kids that are sent to see him, which includes Terri, though he soon comes to question why he has been included with this group of outcasts.  Fitzgerald appears to be sincere, but he is clearly unlike other school authority figures who would just as soon banish Terri from their classrooms or gymnasiums than have to look at him, as his unmotivated mild manner and seeming disinterest in school alarms them, as they think he’s just a big fat oaf, not bothering to see beyond that blank expression on his face.  Terri is unusually clever, however, as he spends much of his time observing others as they continually try to annoy him or ignore him, developing a kind of third eye, sensing what’s going on around him even as he withdraws socially.  What’s soon apparent is how the film quietly becomes fascinated exclusively with unconventional characters, where outsiderism becomes the norm, as there are few glimpses of anything resembling mainstream behavior.  Instead what we see touches on the bizarre without ever actually going there, never fully exploring the ramifications.  Outside of Terri, few other characters are fully explored, including Fitzgerald, as they are only seen within the context of their relations with Terri.  One of the other misfit kids, Chad (Bridger Zadina), an angry kid who continually pulls his own hair out and is likely to do just about anything, having no cautionary feelings, attempts to befriend Terri, but the closeness catches him offguard and comes as something of a surprise, like why me? —something he’s perhaps not expecting or even ready for yet.

The heart of the film changes when Terri observes an attractive girl, Heather (Olivia Crocicchia), being taken advantage of sexually by a boy appropriately enough named Dirty Jack (Justin Prentice) during Home Economics, which quickly becomes the subject of unstoppable school rumors, where the girl is about to be expelled from school until Terri speaks up to the Principal, claiming it happened against her wishes, changing the entire perspective of the event.  This sequence also changes the tone of the film, as the focus is finally on someone other than Terri, as the entire student body turns against the girl, except Terri, becoming even more ostracized than the previously identified group of misfits.  This leads to a friendship, of sorts, which only proceeds in the most offbeat path imaginable, where for a moment, Terri, Heather, and Chad become a psychologically demented, John Hughes style BREAKFAST CLUB (1985), where they have to decide what to do when they have too much time on their hands.  One thing is for certain, and that is the languid pace of Terri’s unhurried life, which allows this film to develop slowly, accumulating pertinent details and developing character traits, all of which combine to paint an unusual portrait of teenage alienation when seen under this probing miscroscopic scrutiny, where life on the edges stops feeling so miserablist and alone, where shared experiences, even the most atypical and bizarre, make these kids feel less like the monsters they have been portrayed as and more like something closer to their own skin.  This film, perhaps overly optimistic and upbeat, has a way of taking the teenage spirit of rebellion and insurrection and somehow offering it a safe place in this world, where, in reality, one is not so assured that safe havens like this exist outside the realm of the imagination.