Bandslam's Awkward Wish Fulfillment

Seville Pictures

Sarah Kurchak (CHARTattack)

08/12/2009 1:28pm

The Internet Movie Database and a cursory google search don't offer much of a biography on Josh A. Cagan, the man who came up with the idea for Bandslam and co-wrote the screenplay.

If the content of Bandslam is any indication, though, there's about an 85 per cent chance he's in his late twenties or early thirties, spent his adolescent years as an unrepentant music nerd and occasionally indulged in fantasies about becoming one of the cool kids (on his own terms, of course).

It's the only logical explanation for the genesis of a movie like this. Bandslam is a work of such unbridled and unapologetic wish fulfillment that main character might as well be named Mary Sue.

While he's not entirely without adversity or fault, Will Burton (Gaelan Connell), the teen at the centre of the movie, still lives the kind of life that only exists in the lonely fantasies of serious music fans. He knows everything about music. This superior knowledge makes him unhappy and isolated at the beginning of the film, but even that is quickly remedied when his mom gets a new job and they pack up and move to a new city, full of comely young women who fall all over his incredible knowledge.

He wins over a blonde rocker (Charlotte, played by Aly Michalka of Aly & AJ fame) by talking about The Velvet Underground and stuns the rest of her band by name-dropping Thin Lizzy. He lectures his mom about ska and she thinks it's the most adorable thing ever. He bonds with his gorgeous outcast of a love interest, Sa5m (Vanessa Hudgens from the High School Musical franchise) over even more ska talk and a monologue about the cultural significance of CBGBs.

Charlotte tells the rest of her band that Will has more music knowledge in his finger than the rest of them combined, and allows him to become a svengali-like manager. He adds new members and completely overhauls their sound while offering insight like, "The Arcade Fire have a cellist" and everyone thinks this is absolute genius as he prepares them for the giant high school battle of the bands known as Bandslam.

Some adversity, angst and other related drama are thrown in the way of these plucky teens as they navigate friendships, love, family problems and competition on their way to the big show, but at its heart, Bandslam is really about a lonely nerd finding communion and belonging with his kind and enjoying a little recognition and acceptance from those not quite at his level.

It's hard to fault Cagan for coming up with a story like this. Anyone who grew up with a record collection exponentially larger than their social circle likely remembers the loneliness and isolation of adolescence all too well. A large percentage of us probably indulged in similar fantasies, filled with cool and attractive people who loved the same bands as us and therefore totally understood us. For a certain type of music fan, particularly at a certain age, there's probably not a greater bond imaginable.

The problem with Bandslam isn't that it deals with that fantasy at all, but the way the movie fulfills it. The amazing things that happen to Will are just too perfect and too fantastical. This, combined with the fact that most of the pop culture references are rather anachronistic for a world that includes Facebook and MySpace (quoting Eels lyrics in 2009? Really?), makes the whole package seem like it's less about escapism and speaking to common longing and feelings than it is about one person's specific wish being fulfilled.

It also makes things just a bit too ridiculous to bear. Even if a teenager in 2009 really did think of CBGB as the greatest place on earth, there's no chance he'd be able to break in and get to see the place with the girl of his dreams. And even if he did, chances are she wouldn't totally fall in love with him — and CBs — because he made some pedantic speech about how, without the bar and The Ramones, we'd never have The Killers.