July 29, 2003
You stole MY summer, Pete Jones.
Earnestness by itself is intolerably boring and Pete Jones' film Stolen Summer oozes with unchecked earnestness. No one ever slaps the earnestness in the face and forces it to choose between staying earnest and becoming cynical. No one ever makes earnestness work for its money. Earnestness gets to skip through the daisies while we waste 91 minutes of our lives watching it frolic.
Lemme tell you something. I'm a member of LivePlanet and I participate in Project Greenlight. As part of the script-rating community there, I've read several of the screenplays submitted to Project Greenlight and Stolen Summer was by far the best one I saw while I was there.
Unfortunately, I don't think that's a testament to the greatness of Stolen Summer, but rather to the shoddy quality of the other submissions. I read crap that wouldn't have passed a high school english assignment. People who thought they could make a film about an epic battle between heaven and hell for under a million dollars. People who thought that serial killers made good main characters simply because they were serial killers. I've met several serial killers in my life, and I'll tell you they're generally the most reserved and mundane group you'll ever meet. Okay, that's a lie. But really, you have to put some effort into your characters instead of relying on stereotypes to carry your work.
I also think there's a funamental flaw in the idea of letting a large group of people vote to select ten finalists. The scripts that evoke strong emotions in people are going to also create love/hate reactions in the community. Stolen Summer may be consistently rated with fours, but there may be a better script that averages out to a three because of mixed ratings of fives and ones. That may be the film that should have been made, but it was relegated to the slush pile based on Popular Opinion. Let's all just take a moment to remember that Popular Opinion is what brought us such entertainment gems as Menudo, The Real World, and Saved by the Bell.
Everyone's going to read Stolen Summer and say, "Awww" and give it a five. There's nothing not to like about it. But then again, there's nothing particularly challenging about it either. If I did a rewrite, I would have Pete set up his little religious drive-thru conversion stand and the members of the temple get so upset that they form a mob and set him ablaze and his father (the fireman) arrives and can't save him (How's that for a touching moment?) then Pete dies and finds out there is no afterlife at all. He haunts the temple, trying to send a message to the congregation that they're wasting their time with religion. Then they call in Whoopi who communicates with Pete and spreads his message and the congregation goes all heathen-like because there is no afterlife. The National Guard has to be called in to subdue to rioting and looting and finally Tommy Lee Jones comes in to negotiate an uneasy peace. I think that's a much better movie, don't you?