![]() Van Sant tries to fluff out the plot by slowing down the action whenever he can, using slow motion and some musical interludes to a questionable effect - if the script (adapted from Blake Nelson's novel) wasn't there to begin with, maybe the film shouldn't have been made, because if the fluff was cut out, it would come in under an hour. The plot, however, is a threadbare, ragbag ensemble, something that the narrator (Alex) - who admits he didn't do too well in creative writing - apologises for (which was nice of him): it's his story and he's telling it the only way he can. Although existentialism in youth is explored, Paranoid Park is no Kids or Ken Park - it's not as gritty or depressing, and plot plays too much of a role for that. With a cast of unknowns and newcomers, the story sees teenager and avid skateboarder Alex (Nevins) involved with the death of a security guard who was killed on the rail tracks close to the titular skate park. The locals, she explains, are football people.Īnd if "The Faculty" is the only movie they see his year, maybe they can be fooled into believing that it is fresh and frightening.After a mainstream flirt with Good Will Hunting, To Die For and Psycho, Gus Van Sant has returned to his indie roots of late with Elephant, Last Days and now Paranoid Park. Herrington High is one of those schools that, as Principal Drake explains at the outset, has no money for new computers, a class trip to New York City or a school musical this year, but can come up with cash for all the new football equipment Robert Patrick (the indefatigable villain of "Terminator 2") as the volatile Coach Willis. The adults aren't bad, either: Salma Hayek, all but hidden behind her tissues as the sniffling school nurse Bebe Neuwirth as Principal Drake Famke Janssen as a seemingly shy teacher Piper Laurie as a senior faculty member, and To be a science genius, and Elijah Wood as Casey, the decent little victim of the school bullies, who turns out just fine. So the chief pleasures of the film, such as they are, remain the actors: Jordana Brewster as Delilah, the beauteous, tart-tongued cheerleader captain and editor in chief of the school newspaper Shawn Hatosky as Stan, her soon-to-be formerīoyfriend, the quarterback and captain of the Herrington High football team, who is undergoing a pre-midlife crisis and hanging up his pads Clea DuVall, as Stokely, the unhappy loner and science-fiction aficionado whom Delilah tauntsĪs a lesbian Laura Harris as Marybeth, the sweet blond Southern belle who is the new girl in school Josh Hartnett as the cool Zeke, who peddles homemade inhalable substances, condoms and fake ID's, among other wares, but happens ![]() In one of the film's wittier passages, the six high school students puzzling out the mysteries of a small new creature found on a football field, a teacher's corpse in a closet and a sudden outbreak of docility among their normallyīrutish and dysfunctional schoolmates speculate that paranoid movies of the past may have been part of a plot to soften up the public for the real invasion of the body snatchers.īy contrast, "The Faculty," directed by Robert Rodriguez, whose credits include "El Mariachi" and "Desperado," and written by the ubiquitous Kevin Williams of the "Scream" movies and other adolescentĪdventures, opens with a clunky, bloody, cheap-thrills sequence that colors what happens afterward with triteness. Half a dozen appealing young actors playing the roles of teen-agers who are all that stand between the Midwestern monsters and the end of the world as certain moviegoers know it. The list could be extended, but the point is clear: this mediocre sci-fi horror film about an Ohio high school being taken over by thirsty space aliens intent on world domination breaks no new ground. ![]() There are the slimy, sharp-toothed creatures of "Alien." And over there are the movie-wise teen-agers of "Scream." Here are the paranoia and parasitism of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Ike Frankenstein, "The Faculty" plunders the crypts of cinema for its body parts.
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