Directed By: Adam Bowers
Starring: Adam Bowers, Jayme Ratzer, Valerie Jones, and Toby "Tobuscus" Turner
Released: 2010
Genre: Indie dramedy
Look who made it to the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.
The Lazy Viewer
My brother played a very nasty trick on me, you see. He turned fourteen years old, hit puberty, and entered the pop culture sphere. Imagine my surprise when I get home from Iowa to see this five-foot-something guy in my house, talking about Skyrim and his favorite vloggers. My brother is connected to the internet?! I digress.
We watched this movie together, my little brother and I, upon his recommendation. Everyone has their favorite YouTube personality (or three, if you're like me and divide your attention between beardy Chicago men, brilliant authors, or British nerds), and Toby "Tobuscus" Turner, my brother's vlog god, plays a supporting role in New Low. And so we watched.
A. The Timing Was Ripe
And it's viewable via Netflix, so this film held me to my Mayterm Challenge.
B. Low Budget = High Credibility
What does this mean? This movie is the mos realistic cinematic look at everyday life that I've seen in my short span in the cina-sphere. From the characters to the plot to the actual media of the movie itself, New Low breathes "this-is-real-life." So, if you're a lazy viewer like me and don't want to suspend your disbelief, you'll like New Low. If you watch movies to escape reality, you might want to turn your attention toward talking animals and vengeful truck tires.
Important Nouns
People
Vicky, an artistic, emotionally disturbed bartender. Her relationship with Wendell starts when he fails in his suave attempt to light her cigarette. Their love stint lasts longer than it should, probably because Wendell doesn't care one way or the other about most things in his life. Vicky is spunky, creative, a bit of a slob, and one of those girls that can wrap guys around her finger by verbally abusing them. Valerie is the one character in New Low with the potential to move away from her hometown and never look back. She is simultaneously self-aware and ready to pay attention to the world's needs, embarking on endless crusades. While we get a glimpse of her fights in New Low (eg, female empowerment and world hunger), Valerie's main enemy is apathy. Which is funny, because she takes quite a liking to Wendell, apathy's poster boy. With a steady job, a caring heart, and endless tolerance, Valerie's a pretty stable character. But nobody's perfect, and Valerie's tendency to have a gaggle of hipster friends is an irreversible character flaw. |
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Places
Things
- Food & Drink: Food scrounged from dumpsters and art galleries is popular for Wendell and Vicky. Wendell also has a soft spot for ice cream and cookies. The characters wash their junk food of choice down with liquor. Lots of liquor.
- Accessories: Vicky and Valerie are both artists, so they have their respective mediums. Dave has a sweet set of Heelys that actually roll into the spotlight toward the end of the movie for Dave's single (but inconclusive) moment of decisiveness.
- Vices & Virtues: Vicky is often seen with cigarettes, rocking the lifestyle of a young adult artist who has no food budget because every tip she gets from her job is poured into booze and smokes. Valerie has an affinity for social awareness videos that she regularly rents from Wendell's store.
Ideas
- The reality of love: Do I have one true soulmate? Does the attraction I have for the cute grocery boy have the potential to bloom into the feelings I have for the best friend I've been loving for years? How versatile is love? How much is the average young adult willing to stretch their personalities and values to make a relationship work? Will our romantic pursuits have a picture-perfect ending? New Low echoes how love works in the real world: it can appear out of nowhere and disappear as quickly as it came. It can sneak its way into everyday moments, making something ordinary feel very extraordinary. It can be confusing, it can be shared, it can be abused and broken very easily. New Low keeps the love outlook real.
- Introverts / Extroverts: None of the characters in New Low are particularly extroverted. In fact, they all seem relatively content to coexist peacefully in Nondescript Cityville with personal interaction as an elective activity. In most movies, the dashing, extroverted alpha male gets the girl. In New Low, Wendell, the quiet semi-jerk, gets plenty of action. Plenty.
- This is real life. Really, it is. The characters are average Joes that still have their own defining quirks. The setting is variable because it's so basic. And the movie is shot standard-def, which gives it a very rough feel at times. Then again, life has a very rough feel sometimes.