I had the great pleasure of seeing this film with a small but very appreciative crowd at the Toronto Indie Film Festival. As if often the case, the quality of a film has little relation to the actual number of people who see it, and I thought this was a brilliantly fun piece of work. Near the beginning, I noticed a lite-bright sign underneath the bed reading 'Save Ferris', which perfectly matched my impressions early in the film in terms of how it reminded me of Ferris Beuller's Day Off. There was also something of the ol' Chris Elliot in the character of Cody, with his completely guileless sledgehammer wit, aiming it blithely at everything from 90's-style social climbing to televangelicals. Also worth mentioning is the performance of Tiffany Grant as Alicia Dimsdale, which is one of the best set-pieces of the movie. No matter what outragously rude thing Cody would say, she'd just give this brief frozen-stare pause, then continue right on what she was talking about ('Anyway...'). In a film with so much broad humour ('He threw his pants at me!'), it also manages to be quite clever in it's cultural references, even Shakespeare -appropriate, since the ultimate message of the film can be best summed up in the immortal line -'To thine own self be true'.
Review of Laughing Boy
