Drawing blanks

DRAWING FLIES (1996)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Known as the "lost View Askew" film, "Drawing Flies" is one unusual picture. It starts as a Generation-X picture about lost jobs and welfare checks, and slowly segues into a road movie about a search for the Sasquatch creature in the endless wilderness area of British Columbia.

Jason Lee plays Donner, the leader of the group of Generation X slackers who leads them on to this expedition. At first, these slackers mostly sit around all day in their apartment doing absolutely nothing. Getting high, smoking marihuana and collecting unemployment is about all on their minds. Unfortunately, unemployment checks are suddenly running out, as the system cuts them off. They know not what to do. HINT: How about looking for a job? Instead, these slackers think it is cool to just hope their unemployment is reinstated. They go to a party to score beer and get high, but have to pay for admittance. It is at this point that I lost patience since I have seen so many similar films about the exact same situations. Richard Linklater's "Slacker" said it all, and with far more ingenuity and wit than the first twenty minutes of this film. Yes, even appearances by Kevin Smith as Silent Bob (this is View Askew, after all) and Joey Lauren Adams did not take me out of my doldrums.

Finally, a scene arrives where Donner tells his friends to wake up out of their hopeless funk, and go on a camping trip to some log cabin in British Columbia. Donner convinces them to go, riding in a van and with no cash and only the barest of food rations. There are lots of scenes of campfires, beer kegs, a group of diaper-wearing adults, a lot of cussing, Jason Mewes living up to his reputation as, what else, a stoner, and a few one-liners and not much else, I'm afraid.

Most of "Drawing Flies" is vapid nonsense with no reason for its existence. Shot in grainy 16mm black-and-white, directors Malcolm Ingram and Matt Gissing cannot begin to approximate the engaging repartee of their View Askew god, Kevin Smith. At least, Jason Lee shines occasionally, as he shows Donner slowly losing his sanity, as does Renee Humphrey, and there is some of that desperation and ill will for the search for this "Bigfoot" that made me remember "The Blair Witch Project" (though this film was shot much earlier than "Blair"). Outside of that, there is not much here to draw attention.