Movie reviews: Hollywood and Indie, specializing in independent comedies, dramas, thrillers and romance.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Happily Never After: Movie Review
The opposite of a family dramedy but fits the definition of dysfunctional.
Jason Carrougher stars as Cole Killian, a professional photographer, but who is creepy and dysfunctional enough that he’s likely just a guy who thinks he’s a professional photographer. After meeting an old high school flame and then hearing about an orphanage with abandoned teenagers, he has decided that Bo (Ryan Wichert) is his son.
2012
Directed by: Jamie Heinrich
Screenplay by: Jamie Heinrich
Starring: Jason Carrougher, Ryan Wichert and Katherine Bending
He then proceeds to meet Bo and ingratiate himself into his life. Bo doesn’t really mind having this older guy around as he can buy him beer and provide him with marijuana. Bo thinks they’re making a skate-boarding flick; Cole refers to it as a documentary. Never failing to mention his teenage daughter and throwing her a surprise party, the obvious answer seems that he’s using this documentary to reveal to everyone that Bo is his son.
But the mysterious score and Cole’s inappropriate actions suggested that there was something much more sinister going on. Something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, so I kept watching waiting for the big reveal. I watched through the many, many scenes of hand-held amateur skateboarding footage with bad rap music backing it up.
The introduction of Bo’s girlfriend Nikki (Katherine Bending) added yet another element of intrigue to where they were taking this dark, gritty, very indie, and possibly disturbing, dysfunctional family dramedy. The actress provided this indescribable quality that made you want to watch her. This fit the character perfectly, so here’s hoping this film debut gets her a career.
There was indeed a big reveal as we neared the end of “Happily Never After”, but it really wasn’t all that surprising. And even though it has a very short run time of 78 mins, it still seemed like a big build-up to a rather boring ending. It turns out that I didn’t really watch anything after all, at least nothing that I thought I was watching.
