Jun 09 2009
The Comic Book Diaries (Review)
THE COMIC BOOK DIARIES
I’m sure there were at least a couple of people out there who saw the movie Clerks and said “I could do that.” I guarantee that was Clif Campbell’s rationale behind the movie The Comic Book Diaries. And this movie mirrors many of the same elements, yet screws up the more important ones.
CBD follows a small comic book shop struggling to make a profit. Whether this a real comic book shop, I can’t tell. It’s built in an extremely open and horribly painted environment with quite a bit of empty space. Although I COULD imagine a struggling comic book shop in that kind of a setting. The two owners are John and Tom. John is the main character who in addition to financial difficulties is having problems with his lady friend. Tom is supposed to be the more free-spirit who eggs on John to stop being a loser and stand up for himself. Together they face the hardships of breaking-up, farting, an ex-employee fired for smoking pot on the job, shoplifters, and an unsuccessful comic book signing for Nick Levine (not played the real Nick Levine), and, of course, murder.
There is actually a competent script at work here, but there are several elements holding it back from becoming a great movie. The one flaw is visible from the very first scene: the acting. Of all the elements from Clerks that inspired Clif to make CBD, why couldn’t he have focused on the delivery? Yeah, the dialogue in Clerks was well-written, but it was only as strong as the actors delivering it. The majority of the actors in CBD are almost sleep-walking through their roles. I know it’s a low-budget production and that Clif probably couldn’t hire fantastic actors, but an actor is only good as the director motivating him/her. The other biggest flaw is in the production: no lighting, no sound editing, and camcorder video quality. If director Clif Campbell is a film student, this is pretty amateur. If he actually is an amateur, than I’m little impressed it turned out as well as it did.
However, what works in the film’s favor is the story. It takes awhile to get off the ground and get you interested, but it eventually got interesting and ALMOST has you feel something for the characters. There are only two downsides to the script. The first one being there isn’t a real resolution or ending. The movie just short of stops at 1 hour and 25 minutes. The second being that the movie rarely take advantage of the fact that it’s a comic book shop. John and Tom don’t really have any big discussions relating to the nature of their stores content nor do they show any real chemistry in their interests. I mean, the movie is already low-budget and direct-to-video. Why not go for the comic book jokes only comic book geeks would get?
RATING: C-Movie
The Comic Book Diaries is a solid script buried in low-budget filmmaking. If you’re willing to push aside some glaring elements, CBD is an okay movie. Not great, but not unbearable or boring which is more than I can say for a lot of other C-movies.
