Queen Of Comedy: All Joking Aside Compassionate Portrait Of Young Doomer Bloomer Comic

 

Raylene Harewood takes center stage literally and figuratively in All Joking Aside as Charlie, a glum young African American grocery clerk with standup aspirations to make people laugh, even if that's her own least accessible emotion off stage. More about fulfilling the comic dreams of her late father, Charlie inexplicably dares the reluctant washed up, once renowned standup barfly Bob (Brian Markinson) - who heckles her off the stage on her first less than impressive try - to mentor her with his shared gifts of the trade.

Equal parts satirical and sensitively crafted, All Joking Aside is a kind of contemporary updating of Shaw's Pygmalion - in this case boomer misery in collision with low wage millennial extreme dreams. That it works so well, may be a reflection of what's going down in the real world right now, as 'misery loves comedy' broken human beings struggle to mend and stay afloat in the present time. And drawing from the compelling premise that 'there are two types of people in the world - funny people and happy people.'

 

Less effective is director Shannon Kohli (Supergirl) conveying Charlie's creative transformation, opting instead for a reticent rather than raw blossoming on stage when it comes to mining race and gender comic irreverence. In other words, if the audience off screen is not as amused as the club crowd, an essential connection is missing. Also somewhat MIA is famed veteran Canadian standup performer, actor and poet Richard Lett, relegated here to an intermittent cameo as nurturing bartender in the background.

 

And likewise distracting, is a setting that claims to be New York City and a supposedly Bronx bred Charlie - but is actually blizzard drenched Canada. As with jokes that go nowhere without the element of funny, Big Apple patriots will pick up on the difference.

 

Prairie Miller

 

The True Adventures of Wolfboy: Animal Instincts Rule

 

A coming of age tale in rebellion against the grownup world, The True Adventures Of Wolfboy could have been more relevant than ever during this chaotic moment in time signaling either adult perplexity or destructive collusion concerning a broken planet the youth are inheriting from them - but it isn't. 

 

A missed opportunity for youth to traditionally try carving their own future as a better place by confronting and addressing that collapsing world in shambles politically, economically and ecologically, and with a perpetual pandemic in progress - this visually impressive, surreal fantastical outing harboring a cruel heart has all the trappings of an enticing confection, with a toxic list of ingredients attached.

The Wolfboy in question is Paul (Jaeden Martel) a glum thirteen year old bullied and ostracized as a result of a skin condition covering him head to toe in fur. Abandoned by a mother (Chloe Sevigny) unable to psychologically deal with a deformed child, and parented by helplessly frustrated single father and local garbageman Denny (Chris Messina), Paul runs away from home to find the mother he never knew. 

And stopping by to join the local circus in a bid to raise travel money, Paul is subjected by maniacal owner Mr. Silk (a wildly flamboyant John Turturro) to being caged as a freak public attraction on exhibit. Resentful when not immediately paid, Paul burns down the circus and then subsequently flees with a gun toting kid gang robbing their way across the country. 

For starters in this underage inmates taking over the asylum revelry, Paul sets fire to a carnival filled with physically deformed human beings like himself. Along with these subsequent plot ingredients counting in addition to arson - armed robbery, self-disfigurement and yet one more bad mother in those many movies. 

 

This incongruently giddy youth revenge fantasy ultimately on a journey going nowhere, seems more akin to John Carpenter's Village Of The Damned and Stephen King's Children of The Corn - and those kid takeover "beware the children" horror movies.

 

Prairie Miller