The indie hit FIRST DATE will hit our digital screens today, after it premiered at 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Labelled in odd ways as Tarantinesque, a rom com crim con and a slacker movie with bullets. The story is plain enough. Mike (Tyson Brown) is in a bit of a pickle, he loves the girl next door, Kelsey (Shelby Duclos), but cant speak to her. Mike buys a rather dodgy car for his first date with her, A shady ’65 Chrysler might purr but for shy teen Mike, the eagerly anticipated first date implodes and it wont be a night fuelled by desire, more a night of blood, bullets and burning rubber. But the real question is, can Mike get the girl or even can she save him from the gangsters on his tail?
Now, the above plot is a set up for a whole myriad of cinema convention and just maybe, something very, very interesting. After 30 minutes however, what you get is a selection of empty pieces of film ideas and drunken musings. I can picture the writer and director thinking? What would sell more? A rather abstract pay off from the Gen Z mind? Or a not very Tarantino inspired collection of events? Then add that with a though like, Does desire make people do stupid things? Or are we all victims to the misfortunes of life? What they deliver as the final result answers nothing. My answer is clear. This is a Gen Z minset within a frame work of absurdism and it does evolve the idea of chasing love in a post AMERICAN PIE world. However what it also does is try to hard to be funny, have very unbalanced payoffs and a confused idea of sexual longing. Yes it might avoid the whole aggressive male sexuality thing but it delivers a film that is just a random assortment of events, which suggest that all characters are vapid and that the premise of ‘Showing off’ is really ok if done in others face by baby steps. Sad really as I liked Tyson Brown and Shelby Duclos chemistry.
