Movie non-review – Daydream Nation
Kat Dennings in Daydream Nation (2010).
- by Shawn Conner
The other day I started writing a review of Daydream Nation, a Canadian indie feature that premiered at the Whistler Film Festival last fall, and which I saw at a press screening last week.
After 30 minutes however I threw up my hands in disgust; not only could I not find anything positive to say about the movie, the feature directorial debut of Canadian Michael Goldbach, but the more I thought about it the angrier I became.
I was going to write that Daydream Nation started off okay, but then I remembered that it didn’t – I was only giving the shot-in-Vancouver movie’s first half hour a free pass on the strength of lead Kat Dennings‘ performance, which for a little while almost made me forget the reeking cliches of the premise. See, there’s this precocious beautiful teenage girl who’s moved to a small-town with her dad but she feels totally alienated at school so she has an affair with her English teacher (Josh Lucas playing Ryan Reynolds playing Bradley Cooper) but there’s a serial killer roaming the countryside…
Ah, yes, here comes the bile. This movie really irked me, and the more I think about it the more irked I become because it is just so painfully obvious and full of itself. It stole 90 minutes of my life with its faux-indie-rock angst, cliched characters and dialogue, and all-around pretentiousness.
Kat Dennings in Daydream Nation (2010).
Worst of all, though, it stole the title of an era-defining album (Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation), as though that would provide the movie with what is so glaringly absent – substance and a spark of originality.
