Angry Robot

TIFF: Spun

It’s a cliché that music video directors can’t carry a story for more than five minutes, and Jonas Akerlund proves it true, unfortunately. Spun feels like the same ten minute film played nine times over. The plot goes something like this: white trash shitbags take crystal meth; cue Cra-Z visual technique and wacky druggie antics, play it for broad comedy; then, two-minute Billy Corgan song over wistful montage, a repeatedly failed attempt to generate sympathy for the poor little meth heads, since the script itself was unable to, and frankly, never even tries.

There are a few nice things, of course. Mickey Rourke does a great job as a trashed-out cowboy drug scientist, and there are a number of funny parts. But the techniques – although flashy as all get out and nice to look at – get stale the third time they are reused (hey, if we want to make these cats look really high, let’s do a quick psychedelic animation scene, that always looks crazy! Hey, let’s do that again! And again! And again!)

The event itself was a blast. The line wrapped around the block: we went to the Uptown proper and then walked for ten minutes to find the end of the line. The T-dot film geeks were out in full force, Colin did a nice intro and then hauled Ackerlund and his cast out to say a quick word. A great event, a shit film.