13 January 2019 | SnoopyStyle

5 | weird and interesting

It's 1963. Stepphy (Jane Levy) is a small town Canadian teen desperate to break into the music world. She records a song demo and sends it to New York City. She gets accepted into their contest. Her dad George Holiday (Peter Stormare) refuses to allow her to go. The local chemical plant accidentally releases a toxic gas. After a bad school dance with Fabian, she gets picked up by her singing idol Bobby Shore (Justin Chatwin) and his German friend Helmut. Fabian tells her that the chemicals may cause mutations.



This is a weird little Canadian indie musical. I like Jane Levy although she's not a top singing talent. Her singing is good show tune level. The old fashion crooning does get tiring which slows down the pacing. Filmmaker Jeffrey St. Jules seems to have quite a few ideas although they need to be sharpened into something with a bigger punch. I like the first half hour with its surreal touches but it descends into surreal dream chaos. It goes from cute weird to crazy melodramatic weird. It's not crazy enough to be outrageous but it is crazy enough to be non-traditional. It's weird and interesting. It's not cohesive enough as a story.