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Fro Rojas is no slouch as a director, and it's clear from "Pencil
Fighting" that he has quite a big future in filmmaking ahead of him.
"Pencil Fighting" looks very much unlike the typical low budget short
documentary and that's a good thing because he builds his film to look
much more like a combination of Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch. Rojas
definitely has an eye for the eccentric and I look forward to seeing
more from him.
I wanted to
really like “Pencil Fighting.” I mean, granted, in the end the concept
is interesting, the scenes are humorous, and the direction is tight, but
beyond that “Pencil Fighting” left me generally apathetic to the entire
story and I just didn’t really know what I thought of it. Then watching
it a second time, I realized that I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I
wanted to. While you have to really appreciate what director and writer
Fro Rojas is getting at, often times “Pencil Fighting” left me
unsatisfied, especially since there seemed to be so much more that could
have been done with the concept and story. Instead we’re really only
given a constantly erratic tonal change along with a format switch of
documentary and narrative that’s often pretty jarring and spastic to sit
through.
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Pair that
with the melodramatic narration and it doesn’t completely
win as a comedic short that really succeeds in respective
areas of genre, and production. Aside from that, the acting
leaves much to be desired, with performances that are either
much too weak to stay focused on the narrative, or over the
top to where it makes the film feel more like a wacky comedy
instead of a comedy based around eccentricity. |
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Rojas strives for a Wes Anderson atmosphere and while it can almost
resemble it, “Pencil Fighting” sadly has a noticeable uneven pacing,
and a story that sadly goes on longer than it really should. At
twenty three minutes "Pencil Fighting" can feel stretched and the
ultimate resolution is much too trite to really enjoy. Rojas really
has his ducks in a row, it’s just the delivery of his concept that
doesn’t completely win with me, in the end, in spite of the
potential this has to be a launch point for a career.
In spite of the
great direction and atmosphere, “Pencil Fighting” really wasn’t a home
run cinematically. Years from now when this movie is a cult classic,
I’ll be one of the minority proclaiming that it really didn’t work with
me in spite of the deserved status. Whether that’s a compliment or a
caveat, I’ll leave it up to you to decide.
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