Friday, November 18, 2022

Supercool

Supercool; comedy, Canada / Finland / USA, 2021, D: Teppo Airaksinen, S: Jake Short, Miles J. Harvey, Damon Wayans Jr., Madison Davenport, Odessa A'zion, Iliza Shlesinger, Peter Moses, Kira Kosarin

Teenagers Neil and Gilbert are best friends, but one of the least popular guys in high school. Neil wants to ask his crush Summer out for a date, but throws up due to nervousness, ruining everything. He wishes he were cool... and the next day, he wakes up as an attractive lad. At first, Gilbert doesn't recognize him, yet is persuaded when Neil knows everything about him. Taking on the name Ace, Neil approaches Summer, who invites him to his birthday party, over at her house. Neil and Gilbert want to burrow a Porsche from a man in a suit, Jimmy, to act even more cool, but Jimmy uses them as accomplices to rob a store. Angered by this, Ace goes to the party alone, while Jimmy and Gilbert accidentally land on a gay party and are chased by cops. After he gets pushed into the pool by pranksters, Summer orders Ace to leave. Ace returns to the house, now back as Neil, and simply talks with Summer. The two like each other, and he reveals he made a comic-book about her.

Too much "Hangover", too little "(500) Days of Summer": "Supercool" is a typical example of pushing for misguided extreme comedies in a post-"Hangover" era, where instead of sophistication or inspiration the authors rely more on raunchy humor that needs to be more and more shocking. And yet, as it was established many times before, being only crazy or zany alone doesn't always have a punchline. The sad thing is that underneath all this populist garbage thrown on top of it, "Supercool" actually has a sweet and honest little story. The main idea is that the unpopular, ugly looking teenager Neil wakes up for one day as an attractive lad, and uses this as an opportunity to not be shy anymore, but to approach his crush Summer, which is reminiscent of Marshall's "Big". Sadly, the emotional moments are pushed in the background, but vulgar, gross-out humor isn't a better substitute. The moment Neil approaches Summer to ask her out in school, but is so nervous he throws up over her, the movie takes a nosedive. Here and there, a good gag shows up. For instance, while in a Uber car, Neil and Gilbert are talking, but the driver looks at Neil and asks: "Are you famous, by the way?" - "No, I'm not", replies Gilbert. "Yeah, yeah, I'm not talking to you, pal. You have the face of someone who is *not* famous." Later, the same driver drops off Neil at the house for a party, and gives him his phone number: "I talked to my girlfriend. She's down to clown around in threesome town. She said you could be the mayor!

Unfortunately, the remainder of the jokes fare less. A short sequence where a man has sex with his girlfriend, who is on top, and asks Neil and Gilbert to hold his hands on the left and right side of bed, is more bizarre than anything close to funny. The storyline makes a fatal mistake when it decides to focus a third of its running time on an unnecessary, lame subplot of a man in a suit, Jimmy, who uses Neil and Gilbert as accomplices to rob a store. From there on, the two friends split, and the movie wastes its time on Gilbert hanging around Jimmy's car being chased by cops, equipped with such lame jokes as when they crawl through a sewer, Jimmy holds a snake in his arm, and just as a woman aims her gun at him, Gilbert hits her behind her back, causing her to accidentally shoot and blow off the head of the snake. No scene involving Jimmy works, he is a "third wheel", when in fact the story needed more scene involving Neil and Gilbert at the party, and Neil interacting with Summer. Ironically, the movie ends there where it should have only started, namely when Neil sums up the courage to simply be himself and talk with Summer, and even helping her clean up the trash after the party. When she goes: "The sad thing is I didn't do this party for me, I did it for them!", she finally becomes a real character, and "Supercool" a real movie. If this romantic subplot were the main focus, with normal, quality dialogue, this would have been a much better movie. The great Kira Kosarin has a small supporting role as Summer's friend, Ava, and is much more effective than the majority of the cast.

Grade:+

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