The curse of suburban adolescence is that it can sometimes feel like you’re killing time waiting for life to begin. In his senior year of high college, the insatiable, motormouth cinephile Lawrence Kweller (Isaiah Lehtinen) is not only ready to escape the tedious sprawl of Burlington, a nondescript suburb of Toronto, but he has a plan: he’s going to apply to the NYU Tisch School of Arts and become a world famous director. His hubris leaves no room for even considering he might not get accepted. Of course, there are respected film schools north of the border, but as Lawrence passionately explains, in a joke that every self-deprecating Canadian creative with big dreams will feel deeply in their bones: “I don’t want to be, like, a Canadian filmmaker.” Debuting in Toronto’s Next Wave section, I Like Movies heralds the arrival of film critic turned filmmaker Chandler Levack with a movie chock full of Canuck specific humor that deserves to make it a hit at home, while carrying all the hallmarks of a future comedy cult classic for everyone else.
When we first meet Lawrence and his best friend Matt Macarchuck (Percy Hynes White) it’s on their weekly Rejects Night, a tradition borne from their shared social outcast status. It’s an evening where they can “be their truest selves” by goofing around, eating piles of snacks, and religiously watching Saturday Night Live. The rest of time, while their classmates are out “having sex, and doing drugs, and getting invited to parties,” Lawrence and Matt have a camera in hand, working together on their school’s year-end video. Truly embodying the personality of a self-involved filmmaker with a deadline looming, Lawrence can’t seem to stop filming and get into the computer lab to edit the movie. It’s just one signal of his self-centered movie-obsession that will start to curdle almost every aspect of his life.
Ignoring his mother’s plea to at least apply to one Canadian school as a backup, she makes it clear that Tisch’s hefty tuition fee won’t be paid on her modest secretary’s salary, so Lawrence takes a job at a strip mall video store. It’s initially a match made in heaven: a steady paycheck and an endless stream of free movie rentals. However, as Lawrence’s delusional self-confidence grows, the consequences of his savage candor threaten his friendship with Matt. Meanwhile, through a testy connection with his endlessly patient manager Alana (Romina D’Ugo), Lawrence will start to learn that just because you desperately want something doesn’t mean the world will give it you. And as his pressures mount, he’ll realize that movies won’t save him from the trauma lurking in his past that he needs to confront.
Set circa 2002 — the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love helps establish a timeline — Levack’s film is a postcard to an era of DVDs, late fees, mixed CDs, and suburban sprawl. A limited budget means that Levack can’t stuff her picture with era-specific needle drops (aside from Canuck deep cuts by Swollen Members and Limblifter) so instead relies on cinematographer Rico Moran to establish the setting. Luckily for both of them, swaths of Ontario suburbs remain distinctly and depressingly rooted in a bygone era of endless parking lots, beige big box stores, and driveways that will perfectly fit two mid-sized sedans. Against that drab backdrop, Lawrence’s need to escape becomes palpable.
While comparisons to Booksmart and Superbad — with Lehtinen’s spiky and hilarious performance matching the energy of Jonah Hill’s bile-filled gusto — are likely to abound for its depiction of teenage besties trying to manage friendships as they grow apart, Levack’s picture also has other things on its mind. Her remarkably funny, sharp, and perceptive screenplay deftly threads the needle of delivering biting, Apatow-ian laughs while also deconstructing that brand’s problematic foundation in toxic masculinity at the same time.
“Movies are my entire life. I need to watch movies like I need to breathe air. If I don’t watch a movie every single day I feel like there’s a part of myself that’s dying,” Lawrence declares. It’s a sentiment that anyone deeply and profoundly in love with movies can get behind, but Levack brilliantly explores why it’s also a load of film bro bull. Lawrence’s passion is selfish, solitary, exclusionary, and often arrogant, and one that actively comes at the expensive of meaningful human connections and experiences. When he jokes he’d rather watch Goodfellas than masturbate and, more sadly, states he’d prefer staying at home with a movie than going to a party, his eloquent affair with cinema takes on a far more tragic dimension.
But Levack saves her most pointed statement on that strain of myopic, male driven film fandom for an outstanding centerpiece monologue by Alana, poignantly performed by D’Ugo. It’s telling that in a film powered by Lawrence’s non-stop, acidic, opinionated, and often genuinely laugh-out-loud commentary on almost everything (well, mostly ‘90s movies), it gives its most critical moment to a woman. Exasperated by his naiveté and idolization of Hollywood, she sets Lawrence straight one night after work, sharing her first hand experience of the ugly side of the industry — one that he didn’t know existed, will likely never encounter, but with his current personality will certainly contribute to.
“I just think you should make films about things that matter to you,” Lawrence says in the opening stages of I Like Movies, but it might as well be coming from Levack herself. Coming-of-age movies have long rested on the lesson that if you find your people — the ones that are just like you, who share your values and your passions — everything will be okay. “I Like Movies” is driven by a deeply rooted conviction that loving movies and being an artist is bettered from a richness of experience and connection, by encountering different lives and ways of thinking and living. The film’s climax is nothing more than Lawrence finally shutting up and listening, and it’s the first moment we can believe that he might actually fulfill his dreams and, more importantly, finally find happiness.
Director, screenplay: Chandler Levack
Cast: Isaiah Lehtinen, Romina D’Ugo, Krista Bridges, Percy Hynes White, Alex Ateah, Andy McQueen
Producers: Lindsay Blair Goeldner, Evan Dubinsky, Chandler Levack
Cinematography: Rico Moran
Production design: Claudia Dall’Orso
Costume design: Courtney Mitchell
Editing: Simone Smith
Music: Murray A. Lightburn
Sound: Jonah Blaser
Production companies: VHS Forever Inc. (Canada)
World sales: Visit Films
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF Next Wave Selects)
In English
99 minutes
