Foot: Cleveland International Film Festival Film Review

On Monday night I went to see "Whirligig", it was directed by Chaz Thorne, and stars Gregory Smith (Small Solders, Everwood) as the main character. Overall, I was satisfied with this movie, I probably won't remember it in a year, but for Monday night it sufficiently satisfied my mind. The personal issues in the movie were interesting, the most prominent issue was the main character, Nicholas, being 25 years old and going nowhere in life, he has failed at everything he has attempted in life, and returns to his parents home to try to find himself. Most college age people can relate to this because of the stress that comes with going into the job market. The story is actually supposed to be a representation of the director's own fall to rock bottom and rise up. It also deals with the issue of adultery, as Nicholas beings to have an affair with the wife of the only neighbors within miles. The technique was unique, it followed the same structure as most independent films do. the music was all instrumental using the same instruments, I can't recall what instruments were used, but all the scores were united. The acting was pretty good. I didn't realize till after the movie that there were only 6 actors in the entire movie. Gregory Smith was convincing as a 'loser', the neighbor that Gregory smith was cuckolding was my favorite character, he was a self-obsessed actor who had retired to the nearly remote shores of Nova Scotia. The plot was as follows: Nicholas is a 25 year old male who returns to his parents house on the shore of Nova Scotia, Nicholas is considered a failure, he has failed at his two former jobs, his parents don't want him in the house, so they allow him to stay with them for one month. Nicholas meets this family's only neighbors when he crashes into their mail box while learning to drive. The two families becomes friends, Nicholas begins having an affair with neighbor's wife. The two families remain friends with the underlying tension created by the affair. Nicholas befriends the neighbor's child, and they have adventures with archery and growing cannabis sativa (the 10 year old kids is the one growing it and experiments the finished product on Nicholas, it's hilarious and done quite classy). However, the 10 year old discovers that Nicholas has been having an affair with his mother, and then Nicholas gets a call from an old girlfriend he had at his last job, he moves away back to his old job to try and raise a child, the end. It was all good until the end, I thought it was the writer taking the easy way out. The themes that I picked up were the idea that one can always start over, one must forget the past and move forward, friends are temporary but family is forever. The genre was definitely independent film, it was a life struggles movie trying to be a comedy. The film represented families that are successful but have offspring that rent successful, so the family has to take care of the offspring. Both rich and poor were represented, however the film only dealt with 6 characters who were the only residents within miles of the shore, so only the 6 characters were representing. I did not see any ideology in the film, as it was a story of the director's own experience with hitting rock bottom. There was no trailer for this movie, but here is the website that has a lot of info on the movie Here is a trailer for the only othe movie that Chaz Thorne has made, it has a lot of the same actors from "Whirligig"