Courtesy of HIFF
Lyon (Wes Charles Jr.) and Curtis (Partap Khalsa) enjoy a rare moment's peace in a scene from "Way Past Cool."
Not so cool What are the good ol' days? For us born and raised in Hawaii, it's what has been nostalgically labeled as "small kid time."
Review by Gary C. W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comWell, how would that time translate to, say, the streets of "Oaktown," a k a Oakland, Calif.? According to the independent film by Adam Baldwin, "Way Past Cool," is the time before guns, drugs and crews of restless youth became gangs.
The skateboarding kids who hang together just call themselves "friends," and, "once upon a time," one morning on their way to school, they almost become victims of a drive-by, one of the impending dangers to their neighborhood brought on by a thug wannabe named Deek (Wayne Collins).
The rest of "Way Past Cool" tells how they and another bunch of kids try to drive this bad influence out of the 'hood, which is complicated by the presence of Ty (Terrance Williams), a young man at one of life's crossroads.
His young brother Danny (Kareem Woods) tries, in his own way, to save Ty from getting in deeper with Deek, and bring him back to his mother and his own "baby mama" Markita (Luchisha Evans).
Director Davidson's film career began auspiciously enough when his short, "The Lunch Date," won an Oscar and the Cannes Film Festival Palme D'Or. He has written several screenplays, most notably for Milos Forman, who, along with Norman Lear, helped executive produce this film, Davidson's first feature.
It's a competently made debut with solid performances all around -- yet the film's basic storyline is lacking. Davidson and Jess Mowry -- who based his screenplay (co-written with Yule Caise) on his own novel -- try their best to play off lighter moments provided by the kids with a gritty coming-of-age story filled with gunplay and drug overdoses. It just doesn't quite work.
You get the feeling that, if Davidson and Mowry knew what they now know when they were kids, they would've gladly opted to stay free and innocent. But it's hard to believe it was a viable option for kids who lived in economically depressed areas "back in the day."
"Paid In Full," another recent film about the allure of drug dealing in the Harlem of 1986, is closer to the truth.
But, when it comes to kids, it seems that filmmakers can put any kind of agenda they want on them. The group of friends in "Way Past Cool" has been made into a kind of black version of "The Little Rascals," including the token white kid (Partap Khalsa), a dreadlocked boy who dreams of going to his "home," Jamaica.
With the exception of Lyon (Wes Charles Jr.), the other four group members -- Curtis, the twins Rac and Ric (D'andre and D'esmond Jenkins) and especially the large and gruff Gordon (a k a "don't call me Gordy, goddamit!"), played with all the gangsta authority he can muster by Jonathan Roger Neal -- are broadly drawn and seem to be only in the movie for comic relief.
The final segment of the kids skateboarding down to the ocean's edge to throw away a troublesome gun (with appropriately uplifting music), while noble in spirit is too tidy to believe.
Playing: 1 p.m. tomorrow at Waikiki Twins 2 and 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Dole Cannery 10 'Way Past Cool'
Part of the Indie Scene USA section of the Hawai'i International Film Festival
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