This film is well written, and moderately well acted. It’s surprisingly well done for a low-budget film. Intriguing camerawork, only a few sound failures, and a lot of very tight scenes.

Like I said, this movie is well written, but that doesn’t mean I sympathize with the characters or what they’re doing, or who they are, or relate to their positions.
Clerks is a good movie, and a movie this film seems to try to emulate, because it creates a sympathetic, self-deprecating narrator, couples it with a bad cop, and offers a real dilemma we all face, the fact that what we want and what we need are two different things that most people can’t come to terms with. At the core people dismiss it as a tale about slackers, but in the end it’s an honest character drama.

"Bums" basically tells the story of slackers, and it doesn’t come to any character realizations in the end. One of the main characters finds a girlfriend, the others are left in limbo, which you can argue is what happens with Clerks, but at least they confront and accept the limbo. In this film, it’s just like following slackers through an ordinary day.

The dialogue is real, and written vividly, but the dilemmas are unsympathetic, at least to me. There’s a breakup, and it’s very arbitrary, and a lot of “Guys are dogs” speeches, the kind that annoy the hell out of me. They’re supposed to be witty, and sometimes are, but when you don’t counter-balance it with appropriate guys showing what they hell they’re good at and why they’re worthwhile, it’s just another male-bashing tome in a long line of male-bashing tomes, which it seemed this movie was not trying to convey, given the protagonist male acting like what most men typically act like, only without a redemption in the end.

The characters are likeable, but they also do incredibly stupid things.

The humor also fails on most all levels. They try to do the funny wordplay thing, and it comes off like you or I having a talk trying to do the funny Kevin Smith wordplay thing. You’ve got to take it up a couple of levels for it to be really, really funny, and unfortunately, this movie never gets there.

It does have its poignant moments though, and they’re interspersed in the middle of these character that it’s hard to relate to (and it’s not because I’m an old fogey, I’m their age). It’s a bit short, it’s a decent watch, all in all, not horrible, but nothing to write home about either.

• For more information on "Bums" visit the official production website: http://www.subprod.com/home.html

[   Link to Us   |   FAQ   |   Top^   ]
All written reviews material and content are a copyright of Felix Vasquez Jr. and Cinema Crazed.
Content borrowed without written permission will not be permitted.

¤ ¤ ¤