In some respects, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is too cool for school. The Australian movie is so indie that the Wikipedia article, so far, consists of one not particularly descriptive line. Unsurprisingly, this lack of notoriety has resulted in prospective audiences that are uniformly clad in skinny jeans, flannel shirts, oversized glasses and a mobile fog of “Rockstar” hairspray. In other words, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ could be used as the masthead film of the Hipster Generation.

Indeed, even the basic plot of the movie sounds like a pretentious mishmash of various hyper-realistic pseudocomedies starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, or some other underdeveloped manchild who looks good in a beanie. In this case, the role of intense woolen hat-wearer falls on the lean Ryan Kwanten of “True Blood” fame.

Jonah (no surname) is a single, directionless, twenty-something party animal who lives with his two best friends, Stevie (Sarah Snook) and Gus (Ryan Corr), in the house left to him by his recently deceased mother. Jonah’s primary form of income is derived through hosting massive house-parties fueled by incredible amounts of drugs and alcohol. It is during one of these ragers, that a lump is discovered on Jonah’s testicle. The diagnosis is testicular cancer, and, as an eventual consequence, post-operative sterility.

In view of this prognosis, Jonah sets his mind to conceiving a child before his operation occurs, a few weeks in the future. That’s right, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is essentially an Australian amalgamation of the American independent comedies, ‘Friends with Kids’ and ’50/50′– favorites amongst the cool kids. And, if the storyline was not enough, the most damning proof of this movie’s Hipsterdom undoubtedly lies in the presence of not one, not two, but three,“The Black Keys” songs featured prominently on the ubertrendy soundtrack.

But regardless of how one might feel about black nail polish and skillfully shaped facial hair, it is impossible not to appreciate how young, fresh, raw, well-made, and yes— cool— ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is. The movie approaches its subject with a wry, fairly unstudied, uniquely Australian wit that’s largely missing from ‘Friends with Kids’ and oozes a charming vivacity that, to a great extent,’50/50′ lacks.

Essentially, ‘Not Suitable for Children’ is stripped of the slick Hollywood self-consciousness that tends to stifle some of the unadulterated honesty that directors of lofi films claim to seek. Comparisons between ‘Not Suitable for Children’ and Diablo Cody’s  2011 ‘Young Adult’ would not go astray.

To be sure, it is amazing that a movie with such a contrived premise— things progress along fairly familiar lines— manages to appear both completely natural and decidedly watchable, despite the odd, unnecessarily abrupt, but nonetheless expected, plot turn. This movie is not trying too hard.

At least part of the credit must go to an incredibly fresh-faced performance by Snook, who is infinitely approachable and breathtakingly vulnerable. Kwanten, too, very capably fulfills his role as the bewildered, blank-faced, Jonah.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the film, is that it is stylistically stunning. Under Peter Templeman’s direction, the streets of Sydney burst with life, and Jonah’s parties are brash and intoxicating. The camera work is frankly beautiful, and manages to provide visual interest without disrupting in the least the narrative flow of the movie itself (the very graphic sex scenes are particularly well-shot. No doubt a labor of love.) A mixture of pushy Winding Refn-like non-diegetic and diegetic music brings everything together. The whole package is neat but powerful.

It’s a bloody cool movie, mate.

Grade: 4/5

Image Courtesy of   Not Suitable For Children

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Over the course of a film career spanning more than thirty years, Adam Sandler has developed into quite the comic obscurant. On the one hand, Sandler has signed his name to half a dozen sophisticated, relatively subtle, indie comedies, such as “Spanglish”, “Punch Drunk Love” and “Funny People,” even delving into the realm of politically charged drama with 2007′s “Reign Over Me.” On the other hand, though, Sandler must also be held responsible for some of the most asinine, sophomoric, underdeveloped schlock-fests that have ever entered the suspiciously sticky DVD players of pimply, teenage, glue sniffers. Having established the development of these two aesthetic extremes in Sandler’s extensive catalogue, it is only fair to point out that 90% of his movies sit comfortably in a middle-of-the-range space between “artful” and “vomitous.”

And yet, no-one would dare accuse Happy Madison Production’s newest offering, “That’s My Boy,” (directed by Sean Anders) of cinematic fence-sitting.

The plot of the movie, without giving away the twist– and it is a doozy– is this: mathematically gifted, 12 year old delinquent, Donny Berger is involved in a sexual liaison with his 22 year old teacher, Mary McGarricle, the products of which are a son, Han Solo, and a brief period of gainful notoriety. Skip ahead twenty years or so, and Donny (Adam Sandler) is estranged from the renamed, and very successful, Todd (Andy Samberg) and living in obscurity with an enormous debt owed to the IRA. To ease his financial troubles, Donny brokers a deal with a talk-show host to organize a reunion between himself, his son and his imprisoned ex-lover (Susan “what was she thinking?” Sarandon.) Seeing a notice in the paper advertising Todd’s impending wedding to WASPish socialite Jaime (tragically underused Leighton Meester), Berger decides to reconnect with his son in the hopes of tricking him into the show. The rest of the movie is 114 minutes of sperm jokes, violent diarrhea, and rampant racism, sexism and a host of other “-ism”s that might, if listed in full, have prolonged Ferris Bueller’s seminal shower by a good 20 minutes.

But, leaving aside the smaller problems of the movie– not that Sandler’s inability to follow-through with a single potent punchline in a film that markets itself as a goofball comedy is by any means a small problem — “That’s My Boy” has one, major flaw that doomed the movie even in its most fledgling stages of development. And that is this: statutory rape is not hilarious.

The thing is, irreverence and the tackling of taboos through humour can be well done. In recent times, Hollywood has produced a number of extremely funny and often beautifully made, dark comedies that tackle sensitive, socio-historical issues head on. Standout examples of semi-recent subversive laugh-a-minute films include, Morris’ “Four Lions”, a riotous indie film about Muslim-English suicide bombers, Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” a movie that dared to poke fun at the Third Reich, and, most topically, Reitman’s “Juno,” which revolves around the subject of teen pregnancy.

Yet, there remains a vast difference between any one of the movies above and ‘That’s My Boy”– quite apart from the fact that those films are hilarious, and the only funny thing about the Sandler movie is that anyone with functioning eyes and ears paid to see it– because, where the other movies have the good sense to not make fun of the central kernel of struggle within the movie, the characters of “That’s My Boy” barge into the dark world of sexual abuse and bumble about in there without the weakest flashlight of self-awareness. To put it another way, “Four Lions” makes jokes about acts of faith, but not faith, “Inglorious Basterds” mocks Hitler but not the holocaust, “Juno” plays with the physical state of pregnancy in high-school, but not the emotional toll of growing up fast. By contrast, “That’s My Boy” does not discriminate between pressure points within the incredibly traumatic subject of statutory rape and its consequences, and makes the entire underage teacher-student relationship — the inciting incident that creates the tension for the whole film– into a big, colossally unfunny, joke.

Somewhere, very, very deep down inside the soul of this uncharismatic well of one-liner ejaculate, there is something that needs to be said. Indeed, Sandler manages to pull off a few, incredibly sparse, genuinely touching incidences between himself and Samberg in which there is a momentary glimpse into the unique perspective of a tragically young dad trying valiantly to bring up a son while going through his own, rocky, coming of age journey. Those flashpoints of honesty between parent and child, in conjunction with a series of scene stealing performances by the utterly charming Vanilla Ice– who should have “[flown] like a harpoon daily and nightly” away from this movie–, may almost have redeemed the rest of the film. Unfortunately, they are, more often than not, quickly smothered by shots of obese prostitutes firing pool-balls from their hoo-has at mentally challenged yokels.

Previously, I had assumed that Sandler continued to produce this kind of movie, the kind of movie firmly entrenched within the “vomitous” camp of his stylistic spectrum, because he has no respect for his audience beyond the money they persist in offloading into his already overflowing pockets. Now, post-”That’s My Boy,” I know this to be the case, and, perversely, this knowledge makes me feel both better about this specific movie and about Sandler’s movie making career as a whole. Ah, yes indeed, free market capitalism is alive and well.

Grade: 1/5

Image Courtesy of  That’s My Boy

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