|
★★★★½
24 January 2017
A movie review of MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA. |
“This is what they call upward social mobility,” Dash (Jason Schwartzman)
MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA is RUSHMORE meets THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Droll animated hilarity within a disaster movie, which is also a high school film.
Dash and Assaf (Reggie Watts) are two dorkily entertaining best friends - think Greg and Earl in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL. Part of their small gang is Verti (Maya Rudolph), who does not raise the traditional cool level. (Though they are engaging, eloquent beyond their years, and deserve to be at the pinnacle of the teenage social hierarchy.) “I like turgid prose,” Dash. Jason Schwartzman has trademarked the self-inflated sense of self. Improving on his RUSHMORE precocity cannot be done, so why try? For those pining for Wes Anderson’s best film, MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA fills the aching void.
MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA is RUSHMORE meets THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. Droll animated hilarity within a disaster movie, which is also a high school film.
Dash and Assaf (Reggie Watts) are two dorkily entertaining best friends - think Greg and Earl in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL. Part of their small gang is Verti (Maya Rudolph), who does not raise the traditional cool level. (Though they are engaging, eloquent beyond their years, and deserve to be at the pinnacle of the teenage social hierarchy.) “I like turgid prose,” Dash. Jason Schwartzman has trademarked the self-inflated sense of self. Improving on his RUSHMORE precocity cannot be done, so why try? For those pining for Wes Anderson’s best film, MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA fills the aching void.
|
|
The school is situated dizzyingly on a cliff promontory, and the auditorium is being built on a fault line. Dash discovers the extension does not meet California earthquake codes. Skewering disaster movie hackneyed tropes are part of the fun. Vibrations cause a trophy to hit a student on the head. Blood spurts. Earlier, a fish eats a seagull. Comedy cartoon violence sits alongside character humour and verbal dexterity.
Verti edits the Tides High newspaper. Dash and Assaf are on the writing staff. They are given wink-wink high school social stigma traits: Verti has asthma, Dash acne and Assaf is podgy. Casting against type has Lena Dunham play Mary, the mean girl running for school president. This reminds a little of ELECTION, Alexander Payne’s best movie. Mary gets detention with Dash, where they bond. THE BREAKFAST CLUB alert! The referencing is far from annoying, as past benchmarks are played with.
|
|
Like DETENTION, MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA is almost a spoof but not. Both films are more like wry high school flicks, with observations operating outside the traditional, and also a meta satire commentary on the subgenre – poking fun at the continued clichés.
Not just clever-cleverness, there is action and thrills as the school breaks off the coast and starts to sink. Sharks hunt the survivors, as they dwindle. (A bit of DEEP BLUE SEA thrown in – an underrated cult movie, up there with TREMORS as an A-movie masquerading as a B-movie, which is what MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL SINKING INTO THE SEA might be viewed as in the future.)
Witty and energetic, 75 minutes is too short.
|
|
