Waste of time

Disappointment for a huge fan!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I loved how realistic and melodramatic it was (as most teenagers know, everyone sometimes feels the need for a bit of melodrama). It was beautifully awkward, without it being cringey. So realistic and the seemingly minor hardships Oliver encountered seemed very major and dramatic. While managing do to everything I mentioned above, it still kept an indie feel to it and had beautiful soundtrack. Absolutely beautiful, love it from the bottom of my heart. 10.5/10

Being so far away from my school years that I remember Betamax video players and a world without Instagram, I'm not that into teen love stories, but I was more than happy to give 'Submarine' a try, based on the fact that it was directed by the (awesome!) Richard Ayoade (best known for the 'IT Crowd'). And I really enjoyed it. In fact, I bought the DVD, but have only just got round to watching it a second time again. Oddly enough... I wondered what I saw in it the first time round.It's set in the eighties (some may call this a 'period piece' but it basically sums up the world my childhood was set in) where a teenage boy struggles with growing up. Or rather he struggles with his own inner demons surrounding what plagues many boys of that age... girls. He's fallen in love with a girl in his school and he basically has to come to a way of winning her over, while dealing with his parents possibly having marital difficulties.So the plot is hardly original and, don't get me wrong... it's not bad. The direction is very good - I believe the term is 'meta' where the characters sometimes talk directly to the camera in scenes where the protagonist theorises on what may or may not be happening. And, although there are plenty of good lines here and there which will make you smile. Plus, if you're like me (i.e. of a certain age) you will enjoy seeing the world before smartphones. However, what didn't seem to gel with me this time was the two leads.I found them both a bit unlikeable. They seemed so wrapped up in themselves that I found I didn't really care whether they got together and lived happily ever after or not. Maybe I've just got even older and I'm finding even less in common with the younger generation (even if the younger generation in question are the ones I grew up with!). Overall, I - sort of - enjoyed it the second time around. Like I say, it's very well directed and Richard Ayoade definitely has a future ahead of him if he ever tired of fixing computers, plus I did laugh here and there, but I probably won't watch it a third time.

Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) is an awkward bullied teen in Wales. He is infatuated with classmate Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige) who recently got dumped by her boyfriend. Chips is his no-good prankster friend. After accidentally sending Zoe into a pond, Jordana takes Polaroids of her kissing Oliver to make her ex jealous. He convinces Jordana to help him lose his virginity. He fears his mother Jill (Sally Hawkins) is cheating on his father Lloyd (Noah Taylor) with new age guru Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine). He also fears that Jordana is allergic to her dog and then her mother is hospitalized with cancer.This is an imaginative coming-of-age movie. The interesting part is that Oliver and Jordana are likable despite some unlikeable actions. Oliver is a coward a lot times. He often makes the wrong choice. The two leads are still able to be appealing. This is Richard Ayoade's film and he brings plenty of visual tricks. In the end, the basic story is a teen flick with two cute kids and it's done with a fun touch.

NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Rachel Davis for "Steve Pulaski Sees It." Richard Ayoade's directorial debut Submarine is so close to being a Wes Anderson film that all it's missing is the polish. By polish, I don't mean Ayoade's film is sloppily constructed or poorly shot, but unlike Anderson, who emphasizes heavily decorated sets, immaculate symmetry, and astute framing, Ayoade emphasizes a more natural and intimate style of filming. Ayoade works to emphasize character facial expressions, in addition to his characters becoming sole subjects of a scene as they discuss the film's events or narrate certain parts in a manner that breaks the fourth wall.The result is a quaint comedy-drama that unfortunately succumbs to its identity crisis and its desire to try and find a path before it figures itself out, much like its main character, Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts). Oliver is a fifteen-year-old boy living in Swansea, with a crush on his cute but ordinary classmate Jordana (Yasmin Paige). The two wind up going out after Oliver's passes result in defeat on Jordana's behalf and acceptance after her own attempt to make her ex-boyfriend jealous failed. Oliver is also concerned with his parents' disintegrating marriage when he notices his father's (Noah Taylor) increasing disconnectedness and his mother's (Sally Hawkins) brewing relationship with a new-age guru (Paddy Considine) that she dated back in school.Oliver is very demanding and blunt, with a desire to use people in his circles as pawns for his greater good without even really knowing it; he takes "having all his ducks in a row" to a new level. He's not necessarily evil, he's just never really been told "no" or been let down in his life until his relationship with Jordana begins going south beyond his control. His intents are not malicious, but his conception of boundaries leave a lot to be desired. Having said that, the relationship he crafts with Jordana throughout the course of the film is a precious one, as is much of the film (until heartbreak begins setting in, and Oliver begins writing notes to himself that will make anyone who has went through heartbreak shatter a bit inside).Submarine is crafted in that indie movie light that emphasizes the quirky and the largely improbable or eccentric. This is the kind of film that requires your suspension of disbelief more often than its filmmakers would like to admit. Going back to Anderson, his films largely work because of the whimsical world they create. In films like The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom, we get the sense that the verisimilitude Anderson crafts is meant to exist in a fictional realm of reality, where things are unrealistically beautiful and painstakingly decorated, not exactly the world in which we are currently. Anderson is also an anomaly because he can do this without asserting the presence of the world he creates nor really emphasizing that we are leaving the world we live in to inhabit a new land.Ayoade's biggest struggle is not really being sure how to capture Oliver's unpredictable behavior, and in turn, how to communicate its direction to the audience. Is this supposed to be a satire on the absurdity of coming of age films? Is this supposed to be an all-out parody, or sort of a "teens do the darnedest things" episode? Ayoade isn't exactly sure it seems, and as a result, neither am I. The Oliver character isn't grossly unlikable, but he's not a particularly strong or convincing protagonist, despite Roberts doing some strong work as an actor in terms of the copious amounts of dialog he needs to recite within the scenes. However, the monotone nature of the film lacks any kind of justification as to whether or not we're supposed to feel glum during the course of this film, or at least recognize the film channeling morose themes of love and early onset disillusionment.When a film's intentions and themes are muddled, the only thing one can do is spitball, and that's what Submarine requires - a lot of spitballing and contemplating in terms of what it's trying to say and do. The film is heavily reminiscent of later works like Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and The Perks of Being a Wallflower in that it belongs to the category of, what I call, "neo-coming of age," where films are bent on quirks, eccentricities, and heavily scripted dialog in the form of lengthy monologues and precocious characters to appeal to the kids who aren't as likely to speak first in class or completely go unnoticed all together. For a soul as quirky as Ayoade, who did some brilliant comedic work in the British Television show The IT Crowd, I would've expected, yes, a film with more polish and direction. The film's humorous moments and grin-worthy sequences only go so far before we realize that the circumvention we expect from a film is missing and traded for an endless game of connect the dots.Starring: Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins, and Paddy Considine. Directed by: Richard Ayoade.