It's
James' first day at a new job at the Philadelphia Museum
of Art. As he's the newbie, he gets stuck in The Coatroom
with a cynical, yet sassy blonde named Claire. From there,
he learns about the museum's gossip and strange clientele
in a first hand way he never expected.
The
Coatroom isn't about anything in particular, other
than working a job you don't much care for, simply because
you feel like your other options in life aren't worthwhile.
In that regard, this film is very much like Clerks.
However, unlike Clerks, there were almost
no flaws in the acting of the main characters. Because
both films deal with public interactions, you always have
walk-in characters that are a bit sketchy, but even the
walk-in characters were stronger as a group in The
Coatroom than in Clerks.
The
main storyline follows James, a Charlie Brown sort of
individual that is so forgettable that no one seems to
be able to keep his name straight, so that it varies from
"Bob" to "Steve" to "Jack".
For his first day, he's told to work in the museum's coat
check room. In order to learn the ropes more efficiently,
James is paired up with Claire, a memorable rogue who
uses her time in the coat room to extort money out of
patrons, rob German drug dealers, and steal old ladies'
menopause medications.
Throughout
the day, she uses her petty larcenies and perpetual lies
to try to loosen "Bob" up and make him a livelier
individual. As the day wears on, James slowly comes out
of his shell and starts to find himself attracted to the
free-spirited Claire. She seems to be everything his current
girlfriend, Gallen, is not. This is shown well when, midway
through the movie after getting done talking to Claire,
James remembers a conversation with Gallen and we see
her wearing a dumpy dress with a black bra hanging out
the top and smoking a cigarette, reeking of death. Gallen
is the one that got mad when James dropped out of school
and took this dead-end job at the museum, whereas Claire
is the type of character that's supportive of James for
not going to school and getting out of the cultural rat-race
for education.
As
the day goes by, James gets to know the his co-workers
better, like Jennifer-his boss who ends up getting the
impression that he's responsible for crapping all over
the men's bathroom; Stuart-a full-suited young man who's
proud that he votes but doesn't have much to do with life
besides getting high; Kristen-a shy young artist that
is rumored to be a lesbian and who has a phobia of talking
about her art lest she cheapen it; and Nick-a air-guitar
playing artist who likes to snort coke on his break and
refers to James as "Steve."
All
in all, The Coatroom is a strange slice-of-life
comedy that is extremely endearing and quite funny.
This
is not to say it doesn't have its problems, both from
a technical standpoint and from a content standpoint.
However, in the overall tapestry of the film, these flaws
are like loose threads that need to be clipped, rather
than flaws in the weaving that need to be cut out and
rewoven. These are issues that can be fixed with some
changes in editing and a fast pickup shoot virtually anywhere.
Content
Some of The Coatroom's personalities seem to be borrowed
directly from Kevin Smith movies, yet each of them has enough
uniqueness that they manage to stay likeable, accessible,
and fresh. Even more importantly, the acting of each of
these young actors and actresses is really quite solid and
believable. While some of them are taken over the top for
the purpose of comedy, there remains a core of believability
in each of them that I found compelling.
Before
I go on, I want to say that I believe that this film has
such potential that if the following alterations are made,
it could be nationally released tomorrow and do well in
the box office. The flaws in this film can largely be edited
out; the one storytelling flaw (related to the ending) can
be fixed with a simple pick-up shot or voice-over. Even
if only some of the suggestions are done, the film could
still be a buyable proposition for a distributor. However,
if all of the changes are made, I believe that this could
gain a cult following in the same vein as Clerks
and Napoleon Dynamite.
With
that said, we'll delve into the areas that I would recommend
get polished and tweaked.
There
were a number of times in the movie that the director showed
us too much, so that it ended up losing much of its humor.
As with all things in cinema, much humor is found in allowing
the audience to catch glimpses of things and reconstruct
them in their heads, rather than showing them all the elements
of the joke up front. This is called open staging, rather
than closed staging. Open staging is like a provocative
outfit on a woman-much is hinted at, but much is left to
the imagination; closed is like full nudity-nothing is left
to the imagination.
One
place where this was noticeable was in a bathroom-humor
situation in which an incontinent patron had made a mess
all across a bathroom stall. The main character, James,
mistakenly confesses to making the mess himself and is required
to clean the mess up with Claire. Unfortunately, what should
be a quick sequence to get some chuckles, ends up becoming
a bit disturbing as we see all the "crap" in detail
and then have to watch a CSI-like music montage as they
slowly scrub it up. True, it's probably just refried beans
or pumpkin pie filling, but that doesn't make it any less
nasty a subject to dwell on for five minutes.
The
second set of sequences that need to be shortened include
dreams James has about Claire in lesbian kissing fantasies.
Short bursts of this would have sufficed to drive home the
fact that he's having sexual fantasies about Claire, and
would have helped gloss over the fact that the women were
noticeably "play"-kissing one another. Unfortunately,
it's revisited an excessive number of times, especially
considering the main content of the film has virtually nothing
to do with lesbianism, other than in a very passing manner.
It made about as much sense as one man angrily telling another
man to suck his dick and then all the women in the room
fantasizing about a homosexual union between the two for
the rest of the movie.
The
last segment that could be improved by not showing so much
is the rumor that Jennifer, James' boss, is masturbating
in her back office all the time. This is brought up multiple
times with accompanying dream sequences and the camera stays
on her behavior for such an extended period that it becomes
gratuitous. It jars the pace of the film and makes the viewer
feel as though he's switched from watching a film to watching
a porn video.
There
were also a few strange sequences that really needed a simple
voice-over "thought" to clarify them. The most
noticeable of these is a clock which hangs in the coat room
and the camera repeatedly comes back to. Throughout the
day, the clock never moves, staying frozen in time. However,
at the end of the day, Jennifer comes to the coat room and
asks James and Claire to work late for a party. As the party
begins, the clock mysteriously begins working again. While
this may have been done to show that the normal day went
by slowly and the night went by at a reasonable pace, it
wasn't clearly defined and actually made you wonder if perhaps
the entire day had been a dream that James had had. If the
director wanted to show that the day was slow, then we needed
to see a slowly progressing clock and a slow-mo second hand.
If that had been shown, then the normal speed of the clock
later would have made sense and wouldn't have made you doubt
the reality of the passing day.
