By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.8 cats
Director: Kevin McManus | Matthew McManus
Starring: Alex Maizus | Brandon Waltz | Charles Kwame Odei | Dylan Hartigan | Jordan Puzzo | Kevin Corrigan
Country: united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 85
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951133/
Jason says: “You don’t really need that much of a hook for a coming-of-age film – they’re more or less going to cover the same territory, albeit in different ways – but it doesn’t hurt to have one. That way, a person who likes it can recommend something like FUNERAL KINGS as ‘a pretty good coming-of-age flick about kids who serve as altar boys at funerals’, rather than something generic that sounds like something the person being given the recommendation has already seen before.
“14-year-olds Andy (Dylan Hartigan) and Charlie (Alex Maizus) have already been reaping the benefits of working funerals for a while – mainly getting called out of class at the school near their church and chances to sneak sacramental wine – but 13-year-old David (Jordan Puzzo) is new, given the job after 16-year-old Bobby (Brandon Waltz) is sent to juvie. Before he was shipped off, though, he hid a trunk in Andy’s room, telling Andy not to open it or tell Charlie. Yeah, that’s going to happen, even if not going back to class after a funeral means they have to include David, who may be a goody-goody but is treated like a big deal in this Rhode Island town because he was in a horror movie the year before.
“The funeral aspect actually isn’t that big a deal – it’s used to show a bit of contrast between intended solemnity and crude reality toward the start, but falls away after a while (although there is the possibility that it could resurface in a way that makes the boys take the job more seriously). What’s left is the classic elements of the genre – kids swearing, acting like horn dogs but not actually getting very far with girls, looking for trouble and finding more than expected. In short, it’s junior high schoolers being treated like little kids, thinking they should be more.
“That’s what it is, but how good is it as an example of the genre? Well, it certainly has its moments, with one of the best coming right as the start, as we see just how seriously Andy & Charlie take their responsibilities. Pretty much any scene where Charlie’s tendency toward the vulgar bangs up against David’s still rather unspoiled decency works, even if there is a mean edge to it. At its best, the movie ends scenes in surprising ways, even if it goes for the familiar (like a sequence where the boys are at a high-school party) fairly often.
“The kids do a pretty good job with their material. Dylan Hartigan and Alex Maizus make it easy to believe that Andy and Charlie have been friends for a long time, with Maizus taking every scene he’s given as the foul-mouthed kid frustrated by his baby face and wanting to prove his toughness. Jordan Puzzo is a funny balance to that, playing what starts out as an third wheel with realistic awkwardness but able to supply a nervous punch line. Charles Kwame Odei is frequently funny as the occasional fourth member of the group, and while adults are few and far between – most notably Kevin Corrigan as a sketchy video store guy, Michaela McManus as Andy’s young stepmother – that’s okay; the kids can handle it.
“Brothers Kevin and Matthew McManus write and direct, expanding a short film they’d done a couple years earlier, and they manage to give the movie a nice feel. It evokes the timelessness a lot of these movies strive to achieve by being set during the filmmakers’ childhoods despite apparently being set in the present day. The Rhode Island setting looks great, and they know how to both use and subvert the small-town environment.
“As this sort of movie goes, FUNERAL KINGS is pretty good, and a nice debut for the McManus brothers and their young cast. Some bits are familiar, but in a way, that’s kind of the point. 3.8 cats
“Seen 22 July 2012 in Concordia University Cinema J.A. de Seve (Fantasia 2012, HD)”