There is a difference between a "film," and a "movie." A film, regardless of quality, is ready for public consumption. A movie is what a group of friends gets together to make over the course of a weekend with a camcorder. In my time as a viewer, I have seen may examples of both.

On September 19, I attended a screening of writer/director Jon Satejowski's "Donnybrook." Now having read the script and having seen two different cuts (a rough cut and the "finished" product) of this piece, I can safely say it is a movie. And a student movie, at that. It is, for lack of a better word, competent, which is to say, the director knew how to push record on a camera and capture moving images. The visuals are, for the most part, static and unimpressive, and dialog scenes are reduced to mostly long shots, with little to no close up shots to allow the audience to establish a relationship with the characters. I understand that this is a modestly budgeted film, but some visual flair would have been appreciated, and it would have gone a long way toward keeping the audience interested.

Granted, there have been independent pictures that have shown that limited camera work can be over come with well a well written, engrossing story and some sharp dialog. Steven Soderbergh's "sex, lies, and videotape" comes immediately to mind. This movie, however, has neither. The main story is weak and unfocused. If the main plot is Davie trying to mend his relationship with his father, then I feel this movie misses the point. What I got out of it is that Davie's main aspiration is to "change the face of rock 'n' roll." However, we see very little activity on his part to show this. While there is one dream sequence at the beginning, and an impromptu performance of his at the end, all we seem to get are scenes of Davie listening to music or casually strumming a guitar. We are simply told that Davie has played a lot of gigs, but we never see him in full rock out mode. Next time, SHOW don't TELL the audience. Anyone who has taken a creative writing class knows this. Also, Davie doesn't look like someone that would have been big in the glam rock era of the 1970's; he looks like he'd be more comfortable in the early days of rock 'n' roll, posing as James Dean's less talented brother. In the meantime, the rest of the movies events seem to happen at random to rather cliché characters, and story threads, that have little or nothing to do with the slim main story, are brought up and abandoned with alarming frequency (i.e. the subplot involving Terry's father). If I want to see a film with this kind of haphazard construction, I will consider watching "Napolean Dynamite" again, a film I could barely make it through the first time.

As for the above mentioned dialog scenes, I guess I should mention that they are few and extremely far between. Is it too much to ask for characters who do speak? I don't think it is. When the characters do speak, it is in short, choppy sentences; collections of oh so insightful questions, angered grunts or wildly over-the-top outbursts. These characters simply do not behave like normal, rational people. Working with material like this, it is easy to understand why there is only one good performance in the film, Al Hudson's, and that's just because he's doing a poor imitation of Sam Elliott for his time on screen. A good director, or at least one who is ready for the challenge of a feature director, would have been able to spot these problems and get the writer and camera people to correct them. However, with Satejowski being so close to the material, he simply doesn't see them, or, if he does, he is unwilling to take the necessary steps to fix them because it'll hurt his creative vision. Being unable or unwilling to deal with criticism in a constructive manner, is the mark of a self-indulgent, misguided fool. Just ask Rob Schneider. 

In the end, we are left with a poor, high-school-set, knock-off of Zach Braff's amazing "Garden State" combined with the equally amazing "Velvet Goldmine," two films far more worthy of your time.

Now before any of the cast or crew come out of the word work to take me to task for this review, allow me to offer this. The best I can do is compliment Mr. Satejowski for having the ambition to make a film of his own and to put it out there for an audience to see. However, the hopes that this movie will be picked up and distributed are simply deluded visions of grandeur. This is a student movie, nothing more, nothing less. If the movie holds any promise (and let's face it, at this point, it isn't going to come from the acting, writing, or directing), it is this: If, IF, the people associated with this film are willing, then, please, learn from this movie, file it away, and use the lessons learned on your next attempt; don't attack your critics, or have friend or family do it for you. If you are able to do this, maybe the next one will be worthy of distribution, worthy of being called a "film."

I am your audience, and I am willing to watch.

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