American Losers

Cinequest 2007

Today is the first time this Cinequest that I HATED a movie.

American Losers (documentary)

This is what the blurb about the movie says:
American Losers chronicles the lives of two New Yorkers on the fringe. Kimberle is a member of an aspiring band who moved away from the Bible Belt to spread her wings and give her dream a living chance in the glow of big city lights. Kevin is a shut-in of sorts on the threshold of jump starting his life after a series of stumbles. He lives in the woods north of New York City and has returned to school after initially dropping out of high school over 20-years-ago. By society’s norms, they are “losers”, but through Ada Bligaard Søby’s lens they become larger than life heroes—wise, humorous, slightly manic individuals just trying to grab their piece of the American pie. 

But that’s not what it was about. They were both the most annoying people EVER, people I would never choose to be friends with, but I was stuck with them for an hour of my life.

The girl was an aspiring rock star, yes. She also had racked up thousands of dollars of credit card bills that she no longer even opens. She seemed quite proud of that. And the debt wasn’t from things like food, or diapers, or electric bills … No, she got a new credit card and went to go buy a new pair of boots – and she was going to limit herself to spending $1200. For a pair of boots. Because she wanted enough to also buy makeup and pantyhose. Okay, that? Is stealing. She has no way to pay that money back and no desire to pay it back and no intent to pay it back. Yes, she is indeed an American Loser. And although she was never shown using drugs and I don’t think she was – she had the brain cells of a long time user.

The man was a barely functioning genius. You see these people all over school, students who are indeed geniuses, of the type that live in their own world and can’t seem to adapt to ours. It’s difficult for them to make friends because they have no social skills. You never see them as professors because they don’t have the attention span or discipline to correct papers. In his case, I wouldn’t call him a loser – he was going to school and doing well and seemed to have some way to pay his bills. Or at least he wasn’t advertising that he wasn’t paying them. I don’t fault him his genius or his eccentricities, but I wouldn’t spend a lot of time with him.

And yet there I was stuck with the two of them for an hour.
Thank gosh it was only an hour long.

I can’t recommend this movie in any way. Neither one of the characters was a “larger than life hero” in any way at all. All three teenagers I brought with me agreed it was a wasted hour of their lives.

However, the short before it, Marrying God, was absolutely incredible. So you could always go in, see the short, and then leave to see another movie. That’s what I would recommend.