Goofy, Potpourri

Have any of you heard of a movie for kids - and a TV-show - named "The Naked Brothers' Band"? I saw the movie on Nickelodeon the other day, and I have to tell you; the awesomeness of this film was the highlight of the weekend. How this fantastic piece of brilliance has eluded the rest of the world is beyond me.

No, no, don't get me wrong. I'm not being sarcastic and I'm well aware of the fact that it's intended for people like Brendan, aged 6, who was watching it with me. And I haven't regressed, either; I just think I viewed it from a different perspective than my young friend.

See, the movie is about a band (obviously called the same as the movie). Nothing conventional or earth-shattering there, maybe, but all of the band members - including the band manager - are less than 10 years old. Parallels go to 'Hanson', 'School of Rock' and of course 'Junior Eurovision Song Contest' and I'm usually quite impressed when I see young kids play, sing and perform music. I have no doubts that they actually did that in this movie, even though I might not be the largest fan of the music itself.

That, however, wasn't what made me go write about it. The music performances, average child-acting and cute little boys running around on screen having a blast aside, this movie is a stroke of comedic genius. Writer and director Polly Draper manage to, in 90 minutes, poke fun of the entire commercial music business; including overdramatized breaking-up-to-pursue-solo-careers boy bands, hysteric fan girls (and boys) crying in despair in protest over mentioned break-up and everything that goes with it. The most hilarious part of the movie is when half the band leaves and the 6-year old Casanova drummer with fake tattoos all over his arms gets so depressed that he starts overconsuming lemon-lime soda, and it turns into a drinking disorder. He ends up going on a soda-holic cruise to Alaska, on which cameo Tony Shalhoub gets him hooked on milk instead. Take that, Billy Joel!

Other cameos include Uma Thurman, Timothy Busfield, Ricki Lake and Julianne Moore. Pretty amazing for a low-budget kid movie with a 3.7/10 (grossly misjudged) rating on IMDB, eh?

Go check it out, if you can.