On the one hand, it is a shame that the Canadian comedy drama, which was released in his home country in 2022, “I like movies“Germany only now reached. On the other hand, it is great that a rental has still been found to bring the supercharmant gem onto the big screen: after all, the debut of director and screenwriter Chandler Levack not only serves the retro wave that has been so popular for some time, it also plays a large part in a video store, which is particularly nostalgic at the time Sigh will elicit the melancholy.
Especially since a nerdy film fan with big dreams and a somewhat spleing ring, but difficult to sympathetic video storage boss as a potential love interest are the focus of the film, which is perfectly occupied to the smallest supporting roles. So everything is in it that should at least speak for a certain mainstream appeal. But maybe in the end it was a little too daring by Levack that the nerd turns out more than more than self -loving asshole on the border to the narcissist – which actually only makes the film more attractive!
First of all, totally lovable and then quite a ass: Isaiha Lehtinen plays a fascinating ambivalent role as a Lawrence!
Lawrence (Isaiha Lehtinen) is a film-crazy 17-year-old in flavor-confused Schlabber clothes who depends most of the time with his best friend Matt (Percy Hynes-White), including watch “Saturday Night Live” every Saturday evening. As a filmner, the two should also create the school leaving video for their year. But Lawrence is not really progressing, because he dreams of the great, exciting, artistically difficult to work, but does not yet have a single recording in the box that is reasonably good. He also wants to go somewhere else: Instead of applying for domestic universities, he prefers to go to the renowned film college at New York University. In order to get the change in $ 90,000, he starts working in the local “sequels” video store.
Here an intimate but complex relationship develops between him and his older boss Alana (Romina d'Ugo). The potential love affairs is mainly complicated by the Lawrence in social interaction is an egomaniac demolition bulb that always says everything that is going through her head – and also makes narcissistic features shimmer through. Of course, this does not make it easy to deal with him and sometimes even hurt, Matt and Lawrence 'single mother can have long singed a song …
The lightness of the opening is deceptive
The narrative is covered by a good dash of nostalgia, because the plot plays largely in a video store equipped with love – in 2003, at a time when the VHS was gradually displaced by the DVD. “I like Movies” only seems a little formula at the beginning: retro paint, an outsider protagonist with potential lovestory and the best buddy that threatens to get under the bikes during this development. Chandler Levack is not directly based on role models, but the action still feels directly familiar: films such as “Clerks – Die Ladenkehr” (1994) or the sitcom “The Big Bang Theory” (2007 – 2019) come to mind. But with increasing runtime, the script begins to form the credible and superb played main characters – and the tone falls a little more serious.
“I like Movies” primarily tells of the relationship between fiction and reality, which is overturned in a bad direction at Lawrence and Alana. Unlike the directors, which is adored by Lawrence, the emotionally unstable boy gains no creative energy through the cinema, he uses the film and the dreams triggered by him rather to escape from a world in which his father has killed. The reality is so slipped to him that at a surprising and great moment when Alana reveals the drama of her life, he reacts so incredibly un-emphatic that even a Sheldon Cooper would be deeply ashamed of it.
Even if there are many other problems with him: at least the title -giving love for filming is done by Lawrence 100 %!
Nevertheless, the film never sinks into dramatic melancholy, it is by no means a billing with the dream factory or the like. Instead, “I like Movies” tells of a return to the (real) life – the greatest fan of the films of Paul Thomas Anderson (“There will be be Blood”, “Boogie Nights”) can finally be there.
Conclusion: A late gift that this often excellent, humorous, dramatic gem is still coming to German cinemas. Simply well written and played scores “I love movies” with an extremely plastic protagonist, a well -balanced mixture of lightness and seriousness as well as an unobtrusive shot nostalgia. All of this makes the debut of the Canadian filmmaker Chandler Levack a real recommendation for everyone who can join the title's statement: “I love films.”