FUBAR (DVD)
Directed by: Michael Dowse
Written by: Michael Dowse, David Lawrence, Paul Spence
Starring: Paul Spence, David Lawrence, Gordon Skilling

It doesn’t seem so long ago that heavy metal and long hair were popular, but in revisiting these things some 20 years later, it makes you wonder how people could have created such a corny, ridiculous culture in the first place. Then you realize that there are still pockets of people around nowadays who are permanently stuck in the world of 80’s hairspray rock. FUBAR is a fake documentary about two such people — the key word there being fake, unfortunately.

A caption near the beginning of the film sums up the premise: “In the summer of 2000, Farrel Mitchner documented the subculture traditionally known as “headbangers”. He chose Terry Cahill and Dean Murdoch as his subjects.” Terry and Dean are just your average long-haired metalheads, working crappy minimum wage jobs, shotgunning beers and causing random destruction for their own amusement. For the most part, FUBAR documents their lives by following them around their neighbourhood, and through interviews with family and friends. The twist in the story is that during the movie, Dean is diagnosed with testicular cancer and both he and Terry have to learn to deal with it in their own way.

Now there’s no denying the fact that FUBAR reuses ideas from other mockumentaries that have come before it, most notably This Is Spinal Tap (although the characters in FUBAR are not actually in a band), Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and also the 1999 film American Movie, a documentary about a long-haired redneck who follows his dream of making movies. Clearly this kind of thing has been done before… and done better.

I think the main problem is just the fact that this movie doesn’t go out of its way to appear real. FUBAR opens with a disclaimer right at the beginning of the movie informing you that it is fake. Maybe they think this helps viewers to be “in on the joke”, but if you ask me, it’s a bad move. From the first few moments of the movie I was aware that the characters in the movie were fictional, and it became painfully obvious to me that David Lawrence and Paul Spence were acting the whole way through. Their speech patterns seemed extremely unnatural to me, almost as if they were imitating Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World. Their Canadian headbanger accent isn’t consistent. There were moments in the movie where you can tell they are just cracking themselves up. I was constantly being drawn out of the movie, and my inability to take it “seriously” often prevented me from laughing, as strange as that sounds.

Still, I don’t think FUBAR was a bad idea. The idea of mimicking a documentary is a great idea for an entertaining low budget indie film. FUBAR was shot on digital video, and visually it creates a believable look to the movie. The filmmakers also chose a subject worthy of lampooning. I’m sure we’ve all known some spaced out metalheads at some point in our lives, so it’s something everyone can relate to. There was a lot of potential to create a hilarious movie here, but there weren’t enough interesting situations or plot developments to make it memorable. A lot of the movie just feels mundane. In one of the commentary tracks, the filmmakers explain that most of the movie was shot within 5 blocks of their houses in Calgary, and unfortunately it shows.

There is an unwritten assumption here that the idea of heavy metal and long hair is funny enough on its own without having any real jokes or planned humour to carry the film. To some extent that’s true, but only if your dealing with real headbangers! It’s as if the filmmakers came up with an idea to simply record their friends pretending to be metalheads, ad-libbing for hours on end, and then later edit it all together into something that appears to be slightly coherent. Now I could be wrong… maybe there was a script for this project and a lot of planned events, but somehow I doubt it.

The other thing that didn’t really work is their attempt to mix serious topics of cancer and death with characters who are supposed to be oblivious to reality. These were the only real plot elements in the entire film, but it worked against the movie’s comedic qualities. One minute director Mike Dowse wants us to feel for the characters, or appreciate their friendship, and the next he wants us to laugh at how stupid they are. The movie just did not feel genuine at all.

The DVD is full of special features, unfortunately, much like the movie, they don’t really deliver. The deleted scenes in particular are very unfunny and useless.. especially Terry’s fake short film The Package. You’d think with a documentary there would be a ton of leftover footage that would still be worthwhile! There are two separate audio commentary tracks. One contains Dave Lawrence and Paul Spence in character as Terry and Dean (again, borrowing an idea from the Spinal Tap DVD). At times it is funny and shows that they are pretty quick-witted actors, but the characters of Terry and Dean are just too vague and boring to be entertaining throughout the whole movie. On the other hand, the commentary track with Spence, Lawrence and director Mike Dowse is even less interesting. For the most part they point out locations, continuity errors, and soundtrack selections, but don’t give much insight into the making of the movie. There are some music videos included as well from the New Pornographers and Thor. The music in this movie really is top notch, and adds to the energy and authenticity. Getting Canadian bands to cover other Canadian headbanger classics was a great idea, and these videos are a lot of fun.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed with FUBAR. I realize that this review makes me sound like I don’t have a sense of humour, but FUBAR did make me laugh — just not nearly as much as I had hoped. If you aren’t growing tired of the trendy headbanger schtick, you may find this movie to be a laugh riot. I can appreciate this movie as a fun little Canadian indie flick, but in the grand scheme of things, I just think people are working it up to be a lot better than it really is. — Sean