mr_bad_example

You might think it strange for me to say that I walked out of a movie about suicide with a big damn smile on my face. Well, maybe you wouldn't think it strange that I would say that. Shut up.

If Jim Jarmusch directed Beetlejuice, this would be that movie. It's about a guy, Zia (Patrick Fugit), who commits suicide after breaking up with his girlfriend. The afterlife for suicides is just like our world, but juuust a little bit worse. Zia works a menial job at Kamikaze Pizza and spends his evenings at the bar (where the jukebox plays nothing but Joy Division) with his friend, the Russian punk rocker Eugene (Shea Wigham, whose role and performance were inspired by Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz). When Zia finds out that his ex-girlfriend has also killed herself, he and Eugene take to the road to find her. Along the way, they pick up Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), a hitchhiker who insists she's there by mistake, and Kneller (Tom Waits), who runs a camp for eccentric misfits.

The leads are all very cute and winsome in a hipster sort of way. Tom Waits is very Tom Waitsy. There are also some nice cameos from Jake Busey and Kubiak. If you're into bone-dry humor delivered with pure stone-faced understatement, this is your film. There's a nice running gag involving the passenger-side seat of Eugene's car ("Everything that falls underneath? Gone forever. Is like black hole, or..how you say, Bermuda Triangle").

I think if this movie had come out a year ago, it would be to me what Donnie Darko was to all those mopey teenagers. I still think it has "cult favorite" written all over it. This film means to present a vision of purgatory, but I can think of worse ways to spend the afterlife than to go camping with Tom Waits.