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.
