STUCK LIKE CHUCK [INDIE MOVIE REVIEW]

Charlie (Joe Moran) is a neurotic film student who’s in love with his classmate, Juliet (Jocelyn DeBoer), but doesn’t have the confidence to muster a conversation outside of the classroom.  Eventually Charlie’s roommate, Rob (Patrick McColley), decides that it’s about time Chuck mans up to the task and decides to help him out.  One day Rob arranges it so that Chuck and Juliet will end up stuck in the classroom for hours on end with nothing to do but finally both fess up to their feelings for each other, or kill each other from accumulated awkwardness.

So let’s be honest.  It’s a film by a first time filmmaker that looks like it was made with a budget of $2 and the rest was made up with a bunch of called in favours.  So the kid gloves are going to be used here.  It’s a stereotypical romantic comedic masked with a layer of low-budget Clerks style filmmaking where it’s more about the conversations and how uninhibited characters like Rob and Juliet can be while watching Chuck squirm at every sexual innuendo made with him in the room.

It’s not a bad attempt at a student film but somehow stretched into a ninety minute movie it becomes overly drawn out and boring to the viewer.  I hate to fault a film for its budget, but I think its biggest fault is the writer’s lack of imagination.  It seems like he’s so intent on trying to mimic the indie comedy that he adores so much (I know this due to his main character’s constant mentioning of his undying love for Kevin Smith and Clerks) that he’s willing to shoe-horn his characters to make sure it somehow forces quirky and foul-mouthed dialogue into scenes that seem unbelievable to begin with.  I found it annoying that the main character was always wearing a shirt with the logo of his production company, which turns out to be the real filmmaker’s real production company.  People complain about big budget films constant product placement (most blatant example might be Applebee’s in Talladega Nights) however I find no real reason why Jerry Cavallaro needed to do that.  Maybe it’s because I’m not the one trying to create a career in filmmaking and make myself known, but it just seemed so out of place and so unreal.  I almost started to think that this film was autobiographical and possibly the true story of how Jerry Cavallaro really got the hot girl in his film class to go out with him, and if so it’s a sweet story that was told in the wrong medium.

There were however a few moments while watching this movie that I felt refreshed at the director actually having honest fun with the audience.  One such moment was during the end credits.  During this time he decided to admit to the fact that no one really reads them and instead of having them like how most people do just have them scroll on the screen while people exit the theatre (or in this case their living rooms) he has his characters all sitting around commenting on it and whenever they made a suggestion for how to make credit watching more enjoyable (i.e. not make us read the credits) it would occur on screen.  Like at one point someone suggests to be different and have it be black text scrolling on a white background; and boom the credits immediately change to that setting.  It was kind of fun and a worthwhile moment.  However, these moments were massively overshadowed by the constant need for the director/writer’s need to create this somewhat perfect homage to his favourite filmmaker in cinema.

In the end it’s a movie that suffers from either being poorly conceived in the writing stages or poorly executed due to a lack of resources.  It would’ve been possible for the rookie filmmaker to wow me by attempting to be somewhat original rather than create a movie which reminded him of a film he’s probably watched 5000 times over.  There’s talk of them learning editing in the movie, Jerry needed to use those editing skills to trim this movie down into a thirty minute short or maybe less.  Also after reading a couple positive reviews for this film all I have to say is “I wish I had seen the film they did”.

If you would like to support the filmmaker and get yourself a copy of the film for yourself then check out his website here and contribute to a possible sequel.

IMDB says N/A

Rotten Tomatoes says N/A

I say 3.0/10

Andrew Robinson

This is my blog. There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My blog is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my blog is useless. Without my blog, I am useless. I must fire my blog true. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my blog and myself are defenders of my mind, we are the masters of our enemy, we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.