Born To Lose
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C-
Showing
Rock music on film outside of Rocumentaries is not easy, though Richard
Linklater’s School Of Rock (2003) was one of the best in
years. Doug Cawker is not as impressive,
giving us the aptly titled Born To Lose
in 1999. It is supposedly about a Punk
band, but the music is far from it, the dialogue is predictably tired and
nothing here is memorable: songs or characters.
It is so
clichéd that I was ready to fall asleep.
There is not heart or soul here, and you never believe for a minute
these people love or even like music.
The film is 80 minutes, but it feels longer than a season of Lawrence Welk, and even they had more
talent. A bubble machine in this film
would have at least been original. If
this is the Los Angeles Punk scene, no wonder the labels are sticking with the
easy money of Hip Hop.
The full
frame image is hazy, grainy and soft.
Some good color comes through, but this is a wreck otherwise, and this
cannot be chalked up to style, as the film really has none. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic
surrounds, but the sound is so muffled and compressed, that the music sounds
like the dud it is. Any more compressed,
and it would sound like a pillow was used to filter the transfer. The extras
The sex
scenes in the film are the worst of all, passionless, silly, immature, and even
porno-infantilized. That took the film
to a level of condescension. There is a
scene in School Of Rock where Jack Black’s character retrieves
the kid drummer from hanging out with a band of card-playing losers who think
they are a rock band. He says that they
are posers and to stay away form them.
We can say the same about this film with great confidence, because look
out: they got their own movie!
- Nicholas Sheffo
