Four Letter Words review by The Grim Ringler

Four Letter Words

We have a first at Jackass kids, our first movie that was submitted to us to review. HOORAY! Rare is it that we have someone that doesn’t want us to pay to watch their movie and then review it, heck this the first time it’s happened. So yahoooo! Ok, back to being a professional, tee hee, right. Essentially though, the producers for Four Letter Words lost their distributor when they went under (don’t I know that feeling -UNIVERSITY EDITIONS!!!) and are trying to get the word out about their movie and generate some buzz, in what I would assume to be, the hopes of getting it picked up. Wonder if they pushed it past First Run Features, seems right up their alley. Anyway…

Four Letter Words is set during the last gasps of a party reuniting high school friends and acquaintances and follows the drunken wanderings and ramblings of the stragglers (an alternate, and to me, better titles, unless they just called it Little Bitches, which is sorta what the characters act like) as they vent and at times show their true colors.

And that’s about it plot-wise, which is not a bad thing in the least. This is, and I hate to do this, sort of like Slackers meets a Kevin Smith film. To a degree. Which is not bad. Not every movie needs to have an explosion or a talking alligator, or even giraffes, though they help. What you get instead of all that though is a funny, and oft-times revealing look into how tenuous friendships are, and how little holds them together. The script, while flimsy at times, does open some very interesting doors for discussion and allows the actors to stretch their legs a bit (which doesn’t always work as well as it might, but, good god, it’s a first feature, they deserve some slack there). The best thing about the film to me is the pacing and direction. Director Sean Baker really has done a wonderful job with what he had to work with and does create a visually interesting film from what could have just been a terribly boring and stationary talking-heads indie. If I had a major beef with the movie it’d be that it doesn’t go anywhere, which just doesn’t seem to work. In a movie like this there has to be something, even if it’s as simple as one character having a personal epiphany, to make you feel like you made the journey for a reason. What you get here is a funny-sad look at a bunch of grown men too hung up with their own egos and posturing to really connect with one another. There was a lot more than could have been done, and it’s a shame it wasn’t, but, perhaps that wasn’t the movie they were trying to make. And I guess I am a bit disappointed that you never get to know anymore very deeply, which keeps you from ever connecting with anyone in the cast. What I do say is that this is not a bad little movie. It’s well made, and has earnest, if exaggerated performances that do well by the script. And being that it’s a very low budget yak-fest, it’s nicely done and does a nice job of keeping your attention. Hell, I can think of a dozen movies with probably ten times the budget that have half of the style or substance.

The DVD for the film is really well done and you would never guess this was a low budget film by looking at it. The DVD features a commentary, a documentary, a photo gallery, and a pretty good image quality on the disc.

Four Letter Words is by no means a perfect film, but it does deserve an audience, and deserves to see a bigger release than they have found as yet. It’s an honest movie, with some pretty good lines, and some funny insight, it’s just hard to believe any of the dorky characters are living too well on the Cool Guy Ranch. I admire the filmmakers and anyone else gutsy enough to put their own film together and keep at it even after their distro falls through. Not perfect, but there is a lot of unpolished talent here and I look forward to seeing what becomes of it.

..c…


6 out of 10 Jackasses

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