Another vanity project from this soft-centred writer/director. A perfectly pleasant, oh-so-normal guy, played effortlessly by Blake Jenner, is our viewpoint as he befriends a bunch of caricatured late adolescents. Mr Normal is not even a thinly disguised version of the writer/director, who evidently saw his younger self as a beacon of sanity in the midst of all that hormone-fuelled excess.
The worst part of it is that Linklater has talent as a filmmaker. The piece is competently constructed and shot, and contains a couple of well-written scenes, notably a split-screen phone conversation between Jenner and the movie's only other credible character, played without affectation by Zoey Deutsch.
In CABIN IN THE WOODS the equivalent bunch of stereotypes gets ritually slaughtered, a fate I several times wished on the quasi-characters here.
The worst part of it is that Linklater has talent as a filmmaker. The piece is competently constructed and shot, and contains a couple of well-written scenes, notably a split-screen phone conversation between Jenner and the movie's only other credible character, played without affectation by Zoey Deutsch.
In CABIN IN THE WOODS the equivalent bunch of stereotypes gets ritually slaughtered, a fate I several times wished on the quasi-characters here.