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Home Room
WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
Although the shots echoed around the world, I think it's fair to say that the massacre at Columbine High School hit us here in Colorado a bit harder than anywhere else. When something like that happens just down the road, it packs a hell of a punch. But even this close to the event, it's impossible to make sense of something so senseless. In his first film, Home Room, which tells a fictional story based overtly on the Columbine events, Paul F. Ryan doesn't attempt to achieve the impossible but rather tries to look into the souls of the survivors.
Home Room is primarily about survivor Alicia (Busy Philipps), an unhappy and rebellious goth teen who was a friend of the boy who massacred several students in the home-room class they shared. Seemingly unaffected by the tragedy, she retreats into herself, but soon the police have their collective eye on her. Meanwhile, her principal (James Pickens, Jr.) orders Alicia to visit fellow survivor Deanna (Erika Christensen) in the hospital. Deanna, once a popular chick at school, has been traumatized by the shooting, and her distant parents aren't helping matters. At first, of course, the girls' personalities clash, but you can see where this plot is going: They will eventually find something within themselves to forge a common bond, and they will each begin to heal.
As much as I wanted Home Room to speak eloquently about a tragedy such as Columbine, the film never quite ascended out of heartfelt mediocrity. Several aspects of the production keep it from attaining the power it promises. First, at 135 minutes, Home Room is too long. You get the sense that the filmmakers were too enamored of their heart-wrenching performances and quiet melancholy and rage that they were unable to trim away some of the film's fat. And that's okay, to a point: Some of the quiet scenes are nice. I appreciated the achingly deliberate way that the characters struggle to find common ground.
And while I admired the emotion and ferocity with which Philipps and Christenson attacked their characters, there's no getting around the fact that the actresses are sometimes in over their heads, trying to portray the impossible. Philipps, however, does stand out as the more startling performance. But, in the end, the writing stymies some of their efforts. There are subplots to the film that seemed needlessly tacked on—in particular, one involving Alicia—and at a certain point, the emotion of those subplots just gets in the way. The breathtaking heartbreak of the central plot is enough, don't you think, without introducing other stuff? These characters have gone through absolute Hell, and to drag them through more is asking too much of the actors and of the film.
All that being said, this is an earnest film that tries to do everything right, and it succeeds in places. Everyone's heart is in the right place. But a truly powerful film about the Columbine tragedy has yet to be made.
HOW'S IT LOOK?
Columbia/TriStar presents Home Room in a pretty good anamorphic-widescreen transfer of the film's original 1.85:1 theatrical presentation. Although detail is acceptable and colors seem fairly accurate, the transfer is plagued with minor but distracting artifacting, particularly blocking in backgrounds. The effect is a certain shiftiness that mars the depth of the image. During one scene, in which the girls talk outside the hospital, Deanna's dress jerks back and forth under the movement of the camera—and not by her own power.
HOW'S IT SOUND?
The disc provides a Dolby Digital 2.0 track that does a fine job, considering the dialog-driven nature of the film. Voices are clear and clean, for the most part, but tend to break up at the high end—for example, during shouting sessions. Ambient noise is quite effective across the front and even sneaks into the rears.
WHAT ELSE IS THERE?
The DVD offers a 7-minute Featurette that offers brief interviews with the principal cast and crew. It was interesting to see Busy Philipps out of her goth makeup. But the most fascinating aspect of this piece is the screening at Columbine High School, which involved some of the survivors.
You also get the film's Theatrical Trailer.
WHAT'S LEFT TO SAY?
I hope to see more powerful films about the Columbine tragedy as we get further away from it in time. In Home Room, the filmmakers have strived for meaning but ended up at a place of forced earnestness. I give the film an A for effort, but it simply needed better writing and editing. The DVD presentation is merely okay.
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