Levelland

Year: 2003 Rating: R Overall Evaluation: 4.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 3.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 3.0 / 10 3.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

The style elements in Levelland would not be so bad if they did not seem so forced. The kids are portrayed as basically clean cut skater kids, yet in just a few scenes they cuss up a storm, talk about doing drugs, and have illicit sex. It comes off as being more stupid than real. In one scene the guys are driving in a truck and and talking about what to do that night. The answer: "Take drugs and drive around!" They never do this however - so why say it? In the same scene the scriptwriter came up with this brilliant exchange: "F--K it." "F--K it." "F--K it all!" Wow, stunning. There is also one sex scene where naked breasts and butts are shown for no good reason. For a skate movie it is also rather dull - the camera angles are uninteresting (especially compared to the usual dynamics of indie films), and the skating is not even all that spectacular. Yawn.

Story

I almost gave this movie a zero. This is not because the story is so bad but because there is no story. In the words of Homer Simpson: "It doesn't mean anything . . . it's just some stuff that happened." Perhaps this was the director's way of displaying the boredom these poor, angst-ridden teens face. If so, it worked. Basically it is a slice of life in suburban America. It's a bunch of high school kids trying to work out various personal issues (we have "overbearing father", "female in a male's world", "teen with no goals", "what's life all about", etc.). The only marginally interesting (and disturbing) "subplot" (assuming you do not need a plot in order to have a subplot) is that the main character has an adulterous affair with his drama teacher.

[SPOILER WARNING!]

These elements, unoriginal as they are, could have taken the movie somewhere if ANY of them had been resolved with any meaning. But they weren't. The movie just goes on and on and then ends with the kids in pretty much the same place as they started. No redemption, no revelation. In other words . . . no story.

Suppositions

There are no suspension-of-belief issues in this movie, other than a bunch of white-bread teens occasionally falling into cussing fits and discussing getting high which they never do.

Significance

If there was a statement in this film I missed it. I did not give it a zero because at least there was not a false statement . . . I guess. Overall there is nothing remarkable about this movie at all. It says nothing and is barely entertaining while saying nothing.