Brave New Jersey
Review by Paul Preston
Welcome to Today I Watched…, a series of posts documenting my new challenge – watch a movie a day for the rest of my life. Keep coming back to TheMovieGuys.net to find out what I watch each day…and get my take on it.
When I see a movie that’s a new release in theaters or on demand, I’ll give it a proper review in the “Reviews” or “Home Viewing”, otherwise, I’ll write about it here.
July 10, 2017 – Brave New Jersey
Ray Schillaci reviewed this film for TheMovieGuys.net both at Phoenix Film Festival, where it won many top awards, but also as a solo film for its limited theatrical release in the beginning of August. I saw it followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and cast. I was not quite as enamored as Ray, but there is charm in this indie comedy.
This film is about the night in 1938 when Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds sent people into a panic who feared it was real and the Earth was under alien attack. Brave New Jersey tells the story of the citizens of Lullaby (not too far from Grover Mills) and how the town went nuts one night. One of the premises that Brave New Jersey wants to deliver on is “what do you do when you realize this is your last night on Earth?”. With imminent danger right around the corner at the hands of Martians, how will you spend your final hours? Unfortunately, I never thought the film delivered on that premise with urgency. Instead, the movie takes the quaint route, acting mostly like a Capra film (that comparison’s been made a lot), but on that front, it mostly works.
Tony Hale plays Lullaby’s put-upon mayor and despite some of the more outrageous character’s he’s played before, he delivers simple leading man charm quite well. Heather Burns plays the girl he’s fond of, and my friend and I spent a long time after the film trying to remember where we’d seen her in the past. I thought it was a TV show, but it was, in fact, Miss Congeniality, where she played Miss Rhode Island. She is a welcome sight in Brave New Jersey.
By the end of the movie, everyone finally starts going batshit crazy and there are some maniacal moments, but it never pulled out all the stops in either the quaint or crazy mode, opting instead to just straddle the line and achieve modest results (as opposed to full-on memorable indie film status).
Directed by: Jody Lambert
Release Date: August 4, 2017
Run Time: 86 Minutes
Country: USA
Distributor: Gravitas Ventures
