SYNOPSICS
Box Elder (2008) is a English movie. Todd Sklar has directed this movie. Hina Abdullah,Kyle Ayers,Andy Cohen,David Crespy are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2008. Box Elder (2008) is considered one of the best Comedy movie in India and around the world.
Box elder bugs are loud, scary looking, and dependent on group swarming. Yet, they're also completely harmless and extremely passive aggressive. Using this metaphor to address a generation that thinks big, talks fast, and threatens to change the world, Box Elder is an unapologetic portrait of a youth movement at odds with its own ambivalence, exposing a generation defined by privilege, potential, and self-induced paralysis. The film follows four best friends through their last years of college. Dependant on their parents financially, and on each other emotionally, they spend their time sleeping in, hanging out, and eating lots of sandwiches. Using break-ups and re-occurring scholastic failures to impose a quarter-life crisis, they take turns postponing responsibility, avoiding accountability, and looking for someone or something to substantiate their lives, all the while hedging their bets and mastering the art of treading water and getting away with it. It's a collegiate love letter.
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Box Elder (2008) Reviews
If Wes Anderson made a movie about you and your friends in college...
This would be it. Saw this flick in Austin and absolutely loved it. It was like a semblance of all my favorite memories from college, but executed a lot better than when it's you and five of your friends sitting around drinking and telling stories. The comedy is dead on, and once it starts rolling, the laughter doesn't stop. But there's still enough story there to make you care. And the acting is sensational. I think I recognized one guy from TV, but other than that, it's all unknowns, and they are good. Especially the bit roles. Some of the funniest jokes belong to characters who are only in it for a few minutes, but that totally matches what college is like. The first 10 minutes were a little slow, and are primarily comprised of introducing and establishing the main characters, but the film itself is better off because of that, and it kind of builds in pace in a very organic way that lends itself to the storytelling, whereas a lot of comedies (especially ones set in college) are more uneven and sort of go back and forth between the funnies and the serious stuff. It's got the heart and the character of Bottle Rocket or Rushmore, but within the context and subject matter of Superbad or Swingers. And yet, it's completely original. And completely funny. The guys who made it were on tour with it driving around the country when we saw it, and hopefully they continue to take it around, cause this is a good little movie, and one that warrants a few watches (you'll wanna watch it at least twice). If it comes to your town, GO SEE THIS MOVIE. I promise you'll laugh your ass off and then call all of your best friends and catch up while reminiscing some of the best years of your life.
Slacker & Dazed and Confused all rolled into one.
This film is funny. No doubt. But it also sort've lacks focus at times, which I personally dug, and feel that it's done intentionally to fit the storyline. It also goes hand in hand with the heavy emphasis on naturalism in this film. Life isn't focused the way that many film plots are. That's the trouble with a lot of coming of age movies; you have to fit all of the salient information into a package that doesn't lose the forest for the trees. The typical solution is to gloss over details and highlight key elements that should be easily recalled later. This movie had more of a "stream of consciousness" style, which I thought was refreshing. It felt like a "concept album" of sketches, and I liked that various subplots occurred just to add to the idea of the film rather than a preconceived chain of plot twists at the end that you could only have discovered had you found waldo or his walking stick in each shot. The opening few scenes do a good job of drawing the viewer into the setting. And the opening steadicam shot really places you back at college. And it is indeed a maverick shot. Then we plunge into getting to know these characters, and I felt like I had a good handle on who each of the four main dudes were supposed to be by 10 minutes in. I also liked that we already begin to meet a ton of the peripheral characters, who end up only being around a scene or two, but make their time count with tons of laughs. As far as a reflection of college life, that makes sense. There were many people who seemed important at the time whose names I'll never recall. But I remember the time they drank a candle, or the time they climbed the dean's roof on acid and thought they were in the CIA. The acting by the main dudes is solid. The preppier of the four (Nick) struck a good balance against the main two (Scott & Rennie). I liked his constant girlfriend drama, especially since she doesn't really even come into the film until quite a way through. We've all known that guy. He has the long term relationship, but it's really just out of comfort and complacency. I felt like he did a good job of fleshing out that role while remaining believable as one of the dudes. That's not easy to do in real life, nor can I imagine it to be that easy in a film. I enjoyed the maturation from obsession to casual flings as far as dating went. It reminded me of the way that many view relationships in general. In high school and shortly thereafter, people need confirmation of relationship status with hand holding or consistent verbal praise, but eventually move from that to relationships that are what they are. For whatever reason, Rennie felt more like a pet than a person. And that's a good thing. He was so confident in front of the camera. He was so confident, I don't think he knew he was being filmed. He did a great job of putting wacky where it belonged. The cop bit was priceless. The constant moochery was only slightly outdone by the way that it was constantly enabled. This was a sharp picture of that guy we all lived with who managed to live with us for a year without paying a dime of his parents' money for anything but duraflame logs and sticky hands, but we would definitely take a bullet for him cause he's THAT guy. He's like a puppy that was just too cute to discipline when he was small, but now is too big to know any better. I'm also glad that his character didn't change much throughout the film, as it provided a fixed point to measure how the others did. There were some good thematics towards the end that served to punctuate and then accentuate the loose wackiness of the bulk of the piece. And I really liked when that professor was smoking next to the no smoking sign. And I liked the Opus shirt under a sports jacket too. I viewed this as partially a critique of the plain vanilla "hollywood professor". And his words of wisdom, so true. That scene stayed with me. I also really liked that that the characters spoke over each other from time to time. It may be due to improv, but regardless, it makes the characters seem more human and real. Big thumbs up to the Random road trips too, those are an essential part of any college career. All in all, this was a fun movie, and it really struck a chord with me because of how true to form it was. Makes me very nostalgic for college.
LOVE it
I absolutely loved this movie! I had never heard of it before my buddies and I watched it and we couldn't stop laughing. I'm fresh out of college and it made me want to go back and do it all over again...but better. The Marti Gras scene was awesome...had some great shots. I think it's a great showcase of what college is actually like but told in a humorous way. The situations the group gets into is so unique that Box Elder doesn't resemble just any other college humor type of movie. That shows the director has some real creativity, especially with the wit of some of the one-liners. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to reminisce on stupid moments of their own lives. I look forward to more movies like this one for sure.
You have to hate life to not like this movie
It's rare that you find a movie that can make you laugh out loud 10-12 times before the credits roll. It's even rarer to find one that manages to you giggling inbetween those laughs, and also has enough of a story to make you look in the mirror and question more than your outfit. And for less than $70K? Fuget about it. The acting is strong. The film-making is stronger. And it doesn't look or feel like a low budget independent film. Not to mention the overall tone of the piece is just so dead on. It almost seems like they let this movie make itself to a certain extent. Like the ship was built, the course was set, but the captain was smart enough to let the wind do the steering and his sailors do the sailing. I don't know how to swim.
worth checking out if you like films like Harold and Kumar or Animal House or even Revenge of the Nerds.
This movie is a funny movie that told the tales of the lives of several students that went to a college, I think it's in Detroit, and it shows how they spent their years within the most hilarious of consequences. Plot-wise, nothing much happens, but the eccentric people grow on you nevertheless, mostly because the acting is much better than what's in many debut indie features, and also because of the sweet-and-sour tang arising from the characters' rueful awareness of time passing. The dialogue has a hit-or-miss improvisational feel, but somehow hits a nice sweet spot between studio comedy improv (think: Judd Apatow) and indie-film improv (think: Joe Swanberg) . And the characters are just great. You've got stoic and handsome Nick Becker, who is alternately boosted and plagued by motormouth pal Rennie, lovelorn and self-destructive roommate Scott, and the cool but ultimately duplicitous Fletcher. Scott's girlfriend Laura adds spice to the mix in that she is both hot, and also a free spirit who unlike the other characters in this movie, knows when to move on. Killer soundtrack too.