Opening Day: 29 November 2007

Synopsis:

"Full of It" is a comedy about what happens to a habitual liar whose tall tales suddenly come true. Ryan Pinkston (Punk’d) stars as a 17-year-old who desperately tries to fit in at a new school by telling elaborate lies to impress the school’s most popular kids. But when the lies start turning to truths and the teen becomes the big man on campus, he suddenly finds himself facing a whole new set of problems that he never expected.

Movie Review:

The American High School, a setting ripe for liars, lies and half-truths. In “Full of It,” the diminutive Ryan Pinkston (of “Punk’d” and “Quintuplets” fame) plays the Sam Leonard, a math whiz that immediately finds himself on the outs when he arrives at his new school, embarrassingly dropped off by well meaning but oblivious parents and subsequently set upon by the upper echelons of the student body. Following the advise of the world’s most brutally honest guidance counselor (Craig Kilborn), Sam resorts to lies so blatant to get through his first week. In a twist that recalls a conjugation of plots from both “Liar Liar” and “Big” with a dash of “Mean Girls”, Sam finds every single one of his lies, including the minor ones, coming true.

This film is a low-budget noogie being palmed off as a moralistic wish fulfillment fantasy for those who weren’t or aren’t in the higher rungs of our scholastic institutions. However, debilitating the idea of constantly living up to lies and contrivances might be, the film exudes little to no sense of the social horror that’s involved by reducing itself to a mincing rehash of teen comedies that have come before it. Its cast is uniformly appealing, especially the doe-eyed girl-next-door type (Kate Mara) and the school’s most popular girl (Amanda Walsh) but Pinkston proves himself to be the stand-out lead, a wry and dangerously aloof sense of humour that holds up the film’s most banal moments, the sort that hints at a well-worn punchline from a mile away. The most interesting part of “Full of It” is its look. The shiny and unrealistically optimistic colours of the distinctive American High School film is doused down into fatiguing drabs that seem almost too elegant and artful, like something out of Alexander Payne's "Election".

The high concept of fantasy melts away early on when it becomes clear that the film doesn’t quite understand the constructs of a teenage mind when opportunity arises. The script lacks a consistent head upon its shoulders for the most part when it constricts Sam’s veritable wish machine into a problem that merely turns lies into life-altering truths. But despite its jambalaya of high school comedy clutter that proves to be more tedious than humourous in its brazen pilfering of lessons and outcomes, it also doesn’t resort to obligatory offensive tawdriness (unless you view avant-garde art as such) to engender some measure of continued interest, all of which could ironically alienate a particular segment of its audience that might expect some level of tastelessness.

Movie Rating:

(Bland and not particularly funny, an interesting premise that doesn’t deliver anything but clichés)

Review by Justin Deimen