Vacationland (2006) Reviews

• Fine Acting Debut, So-So (but Still Watchable) Film

  MattNYC2006-06-10

  The further removed from watching this film, the more chance I had to change my initial impressions of it. There was some very nice acting by Brad Hallowell--very impressive in his film debut and in the starring role,no less (and just an incredibly sexy, adorable guy). Gregory J. Lucas was also good as Andrew. The female roles were poorly cast/poorly written/poorly acted in some combination at almost every time. Also, while the guys seemed to be able to play younger (18), the women playing the high school girls seemed way too old and the woman playing Joe's mother was RIDICULOUSLY too young. The high school girls were caricatures -- overly silly and just didn't have real roles. The sister was also not believable--although I think it was more the writing that her acting. Story-wise, it was enjoyable and seemed to have a nice arc. However, there were huge leaps in the plot--sometimes between scenes, sometimes right in the MIDDLE of scenes. There were also some twists/tangents that didn't really fit to the story. The script and the film could both have used some better editing and the direction seemed non-existent in stretches. All that said, I would still recommend seeing this movie--on the strength of the acting by the leads, their on-screen chemistry, and the viewer's interest in learning what happens to them.

• Raw and unpretentious

  Gordon-112007-05-26

  This film is about a young man's painful journey to discovering his sexuality. The film is raw and unpretentious. It does not rely on steamy sex scenes to attract the viewers. Though the plot may seem incoherent and disconnected at times, and some events are not properly explained. I can understand it though, because this film is a collection of memories that are highly personal to the director. The subplot of about his sister and mother probably does not need to exist in the film, but I can certainly imagine that these are very important events in his life. The low budget of the film is clearly discernible. It is a pity that the sound effects are poorly done. The narration and some dialogs (particularly the scene in the classroom with the French teacher) have so much echo, which makes it hard to make out what is said. The ambient noise, notable traffic noise, is also captured throughout the film. When a scene cuts into another, the level of traffic noise changes. This film is probably not entertaining, but it certainly serves as an insightful diary of a young man's journey to embracing his sexuality.

• A view of growing up gay in the projects

  mleenyc-12008-07-07

  If the main lead Joe was about 18 years old at the time, then this story took place in the mid-1980's. In the 1980's Bangor, Maine was a small town with a city proper population of about 32,000 and a metropolitan area population of about 85,000. It declined during the somewhat disastrous urban renewal program of the 1960's, recovering only in the 1990's. The story takes place in and near the Capehart Housing Projects. It was in 1987 that the Bangor Police Department and the Bangor Housing Authority jointly developed a program where a police officer would work within Housing Authority properties in an effort to reduce the crime rate within these low-income housing projects. Rather than embellishing or romanticizing the story, Todd Verow apparently hewed the script closely to what he remembered, from the chain-smoking mother who passes out on the couch, to the matter-of-fact amorality of his sister, friends, former employer and schoolmates. Joe was molested as a child, and although not expressed, there is an implication that he may have been a hustler too. He was "guided" by Tim, an active hustler who found him his job that led to his abuse. His sister Theresa also tricked for money. There is blatant violence throughout of the kind not uncommon in poor housing projects like this, in which the police had little jurisdiction until 1987, and we have to remember this in order to suspend disbelief that these things could happen without the police or relatives or social services stepping in and setting things right. Joe plays games like telling Andrew a story that he was molested by a former employer, later to become a made-up story, and then later confirmed to Andrew as true. This game-playing seems to track the tenor of the film, where things are so bad in the housing projects that we the audience sometimes cannot tell what's true and what is made up. It is the only explanation that I can come up with to describe the effect that unrelenting despair and hopelessness can have on kids growing up like Joe. It affords the only suggestion I can make as to the choice of the film's title - life is so bad in the projects that Joe flip-flops between reality and escapism, between the Capehart Housing Projects and Vacationland. There are loose ends and unfocused story lines like the appearance of the mother and the sister Theresa. The mother is apparently important to Joe's coming of age, although we are not sure how, as is Theresa. At the end the contrast in outcomes between Theresa and Joe is striking. Theresa's life begins to fall apart, once she escapes from Bangor to L.A., while Joe apparently escapes to RISD. For the lucky few, life in the projects serves to fortify individuals like Joe who becomes stronger by becoming adaptable to life's harsh barbs, while others like Theresa are swallowed up. Thus, in the closing credits Verow dedicates this film to Joe, apparently coming to the understanding that he Verow could not be where is now without the fortitude, resilience and adaptability of Joe. Kudos to the cast and Verow for not creating yet Another Gay Movie, for not romanticizing the script and characters and for letting us in to view a harsh, prosaic gay world seldom seen in the movies.

• A real hoot

  TonyDood2008-10-24

  I'm probably one of the few people who defend and even enjoy "Frisk," the project that put Todd Verow on the map, if that is indeed where he is. I appreciated that someone had the guts to take on Dennis Cooper and not back away from the material; Verow fairly rolls around in it. Judging from what he's done since then he's well-suited for that type of material and should probably stick to it. "Vacationland," a would-be "teen coming out" film, is so misguided in so many ways it becomes unintentional comedy, and I'm disappointed I have to report that. First off, our hero, the high school Senior "Joe" is far too old in appearance to be playing 18 . When we later meet a man who is supposed to be Joe's teacher it's confusing, as the sweaty-faced guy looks much younger than the student he's teaching. Joe's mother looks younger than he does and doesn't "act" any older either. Second, in Joe's opening scenes he looked like he was either playing, or actually experiencing, mental challenges. To his credit he got better as the film went on and I figured out he was "playing young," but it just wasn't working--it was weird. It's 15 minutes in before anything is revealed about who, what and where these people are, and why we should care. The second scene in the film is an extended bit of business in a men's toilet room that, considering where the story goes later, is absolutely superfluous; the subplot with the teacher goes nowhere at all, even as a "rite of passage" for our "young" hero...one minute Joe is nervously trying his hand at bathroom stall sex (a scene so un-erotic it makes you truly wonder what anyone sees in the practice), the next minute he's an expert at sexual blackmail and violent double-crossing. This is followed by an extended scene with the character we'll later learn is "Andrew," and that's about all we learn about him, other than he's apparently gay but not out yet. There's a lot crammed in to the 1:44 running time (which is about 20 minutes too long--I can't imagine how it played with the mind-numbingly long and pointless deleted scenes of Joe walking around); a sub-plot copped from "Gods And Monsters" with an aged patron who spouts rhetoric appros pos of nothing played by an actor who obviously can't remember his lines (he is conveniently dispatched with in a way Dickens might have come up with on a slow week); a mix-n-match almost-four-way between the boys and their girlfriends, a gay-bashing toilet tramp, a would-be wise sage in the form of a nellie queen (and hasn't the nellie queen suddenly taken over the role of the "hooker with the heart of gold" as most tired stereo-type?) who exists only to be degraded; blackmail, theft, murder, alcohol consumption and abuse of looping music software for soundtrack recording. What you will NOT find in this movie are any interior establishing master shots; we're expected to imagine we're in an airport, grocery store office and classroom, as all the scenes in these locations consist of close-ups and poorly edited soundscapes to convey the idea of locales that the production must not have been able to afford. One thing they were able to get appears to have been an actual gay bar; either it's the worst bar in the world or there are only about 5 gay men in Bangor, Maine, as the bar never has any patrons in it. Another good chuckle came when the actors were supposed to be yelling over dance music that very obviously wasn't coming from the speakers, but was just more of the droning loop-music of the "score." Plots and characters come and go, emotions are unreadable and the dialog, clearly inspired by Dennis Cooper, is "film-speak," meaning no humans actually talk this way. Since we aren't given any information about these characters it's impossible to care about what happens to them; it's as if Joe et al appear out of the ether one day and might simply cease to exist once the credits roll (certainly the character of Joe's sister, a wannabee Jennifer Grey who is Bohemia-crazy, seems to just simply "stop," we never know where she is in LA or what her problem is...but again...does it matter?). Visually the film looks very good at times, more a testament to new developments in hi-def video than anything, I suspect. The editing is pretty clunky though (there was one great edit; Joe is posing naked and says, "I wanted to play sports, but..." and we cut to a shot revealing his "butt..." ha ha). Composition is also odd at times (I thought I was watching SCTV's parody of "Persona" when the boys were talking together in bed and visually it looked as if their noses were stuck together for the whole scene!). One senses Verow is really restraining himself from making a "naughtier" or somewhat rougher movie like he usually does, and maybe he shouldn't have held back (the frothy toothpaste/sex fantasy worked nicely, I thought, though the tone was out of touch with the rest of the movie)...he produces and directs this "sensitive coming of age" story much like Herschell Gordon Lewis directed films without gore...porn films without sex in them. I got some unintended laughs out of this and it wasn't boring, it just wasn't very good either.

• Inadequate plot (and sub-plot) development

  Franco-LA2008-02-24

  This movie has too many things going on. Another reviewer comments on the disjointed, episodic nature of the film as reflecting the director's memories - that's fine, if that is how it was written and performed. Instead, what we get is straight-forward narrative - some of the time - that jumps around, under and over, leaves us dangling in some instances, interrupts the flow with unnecessary digressions in other instances, and otherwise simply doesn't work. There are also some plot details that just don't work. For example, why drag a body onto a beach in an urban area in broad daylight, as opposed to night time? Why leave your flat sheet on the body? Why would an artist who knew the Joe character for a brief time decide to leave him "everything" (even if it wasn't much)? This sub-plot was poorly developed to make that point work. For that matter, why even have the man be an invalid or an artist other than to provide the money and the gratuitous nude posing scenes? He could just as easily have been a photographer, or a opera composer? For that matter, how does someone rate an apartment in an Opera House - particularly without some clear connection to the Opera? The coincidences are also both too obvious and to unclear and unexplained. Why would the guys take everything in the warehouse and "disappear." If Tim was a 10 year old school mate in a town as small as Bangor, how could Joe lose track of him for 8 years, especially if they knew each other well enough that one would recommend the other for a job. Some of the other subplots (like the mother and her boyfriend(s) and the sister wanting to escape felt like padding. There's some good ideas that might have made a feature with full development or could have been interesting shorts. As completed, this movie made little sense and offers even less.