a musical dream come true
2008-06-24
N/A
97 min
If you had a love-potion, who would you make fall madly in love with you? Timothy, prone to escaping his dismal high school reality through dazzling musical daydreams, gets to answer that question in a very real way. After his eccentric teacher casts him as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, he stumbles upon a recipe hidden within the script to create the play's magical, purple love-pansy.
Tanner Cohen reminded me of Adam Lambert (whom I'd love to see actually play "Puck") in this over-the-top but enjoyable musical spin on Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I'll admit at the start I sighed and thought - no, not another gay teen angst movie, but no - he is a put-upon gay lad at school who happens upon a magical spell that makes every other boy at the school fall in love (or lust, at any rate) with other boys - and he gets one for himself, of course. Soon, just about the entire town are captured in his web of mischief. Anyone who has read the play will appreciate that "Puck" is one of the best comic characters in English literature, and Cohen does a better than decent job at marrying the frustrations and naughtiness of the fairy into a 21st century environment. Wendy Robie is also good as the drama teacher with a little extra bit of magic to her. It suffers a little from being a smidge too theatrical without the lighting budget to support it; and the singing isn't magnificent - but all in all, a courageous effort from Tom Gustafson to tackle quite a tough project. Well worth a watch - but to get the best, it needs concentration.
