Film Review | YellowBrickRoad (2011)

I'm a staunch advocate of including only as much exposition as is necessary in films. Some of my favourite films, such as Mulholland Drive or Primer, in fact go out of their way to limit the exposition and make the finished product feel all the more expertly crafted. But there's a difference between allowing the audience to find their own way through your film, and simply making them feel like they haven't got the first clue what's going on. If only someone had taken the time to sit down and explain this to the makers of YellowBrickRoad.

The film explains through an opening title card that all the inhabitants of the town of Friar, New Hampshire one day in 1940 inexplicably abandoned the town and walked along an unmarked trail into a nearby woodland. Some were found frozen to death, others mutilated, but many were never found at all. In the present day, after finally securing the information he needs to complete an investigation into the strange occurrence, writer Teddy (Michael Laurino) leads a group along the same trail, where they begin to encounter their own weird experiences.

It's hard to find a genuine redeeming feature of YellowBrickRoad. The premise holds merit, with the mixture of history and legend giving the potential for something worthwhile. This potential soon evaporates, however, as it becomes painfully obvious that neither the cast nor the writers have a clue what they're doing. The performances are wooden and the script amateurish, scattered with weak and pretentious attempts at creepy dialogue. The characterisation is wafer thin to the point that even if I had cared who any of these people were, I'd be hard pressed to tell you their motivations or how they relate to each other.

What story we start with is abandoned around thirty minutes in, leaving an hour of flat, boring characters wandering around the woods. Supernatural elements and surreal sequences are introduced, but are never developed or explained in any meaningful way. By the time you've reached the closing scenes, you're left with so many unanswered questions that you'll feel cheated out of the last hour and a half of your life.

YellowBrickRoad is best summed up by looking at its title, a reference of course to 1939's The Wizard Of Oz. The nods to the earlier film in this one are scarce, sloppy and ultimately irrelevant throughout, which begs the question why the film is so titled in the first place. Everything about YellowBrickRoad makes about as much sense as the title. You'd probably have more fun beating yourself around the head with a brick, yellow or otherwise, than subjecting yourself to this garbage.

1/10

Film Review | Are We There Yet? (2005)

Child actors can make or break a film. In my experience, they're more likely to break it than make it. For every Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense there's usually several pint-sized performers who grate in every scene they fumble through. It's a rare occasion that a child actor can completely destroy anything a film ever had going for it, though. Even rarer that two children achieve this in tandem. For this reason, and this reason alone, Are We There Yet? needs to be seen for you to truly understand the crimes against cinema that are committed within its ninety five minute running time.

Nick (Ice Cube) hates children. Lindsey and Kevin (Aleisha Allen and Philip Daniel Bolden) hate every new suitor their mother Suzanne (Nia Long) brings home. After Nick and Suzanne get together, Nick volunteers to travel with her kids across the country to prove his dedication to her. Cue a series of disastrous encounters and mishaps.

Let's get the basic problems out of the way first. Are We There Yet? is derivative and predictable, packed with humour poor in both taste and execution. There's urination. There's vomit. At one point, Ice Cube has a full-on punch up with a wild deer. That's the level we're on here.

But all that is by the by. Are We There Yet? plumbs its deepest depths by featuring two of the most obnoxious, bile-inducing, poisonous prepubescent Satan spawn ever committed to celluloid. They aren't cute. They aren't funny. They laugh at the pain of others. And not in a Macauley-Culkin-defending-his-house-against-burglars-at-Christmas kind of way. These are children who inflict pain for no reason other than their own entertainment. These are children who see destruction of property as fun. These are children who see no problem in endangering another person's life by implying they've been kidnapped. They are purely and comprehensively awful.

Not only does this make watching any scene involving Lindsey and Kevin about as enjoyable as swallowing a packet of razor blades and washing it down with battery acid, from a plot point of view it also provides a pretty big problem. When the children discover that their natural father, whom they would much rather their mother got back with than find someone new, has no time for them any more, we're supposed to feel sorry for them and understand why they are the way they are. Except that we don't. We really really don't at all. By this point, Lindsey and Kevin have been set up as such an excruciating and repellent presence that it's impossible to feel anything but hatred towards them, let alone anything resembling sympathy.

All this adds up to one of the most abhorrent film experiences of recent years. If anything, to create a film of such overwhelming terribleness should be seen as something of a feat in itself. But it doesn't mean you should watch it. Nobody needs to watch this film. I may have said that Are We There Yet? needs to be seen to be believed, but in truth, stay far far away. I've watched and reviewed it to save you from unnecessary pain.

1/10