Box Elder (2008) User Reviews

worth checking out if you like films like Harold and Kumar or Animal House or even Revenge of the Nerds.

[nateraccoon · 8/10 · 25 March 2016]

This movie is a funny movie that told the tales of the lives of several students that went to a college, I think it's in Detroit, and it shows how they spent their years within the most hilarious of consequences.

Plot-wise, nothing much happens, but the eccentric people grow on you nevertheless, mostly because the acting is much better than what's in many debut indie features, and also because of the sweet-and-sour tang arising from the characters' rueful awareness of time passing.

The dialogue has a hit-or-miss improvisational feel, but somehow hits a nice sweet spot between studio comedy improv (think: Judd Apatow) and indie-film improv (think: Joe Swanberg) . And the characters are just great.

You've got stoic and handsome Nick Becker, who is alternately boosted and plagued by motormouth pal Rennie, lovelorn and self-destructive roommate Scott, and the cool but ultimately duplicitous Fletcher. Scott's girlfriend Laura adds spice to the mix in that she is both hot, and also a free spirit who unlike the other characters in this movie, knows when to move on.

Killer soundtrack too.

Found this movie at a Goodwill in Milwaukee

[zachass-37879 · 7/10 · 31 January 2017]

I'm from Missouri and have a bunch of friends who go to Mizzou so I bought it kinda as a "Oh I've been to that place" or "that bar or restaurant doesn't even exist anymore" but ended up really liking it. Some of jokes and gags made me laugh out loud and the characters are really authentic to some of the people I know that go to CoMo and really a lot of college students who are just trying to find their way while also procrastinating as much as they can before the whole adult thing post graduation. I think the best dialogue of the movie was in one of the last scenes where the teacher has one of the guys sit down with him and tells him he needs to sink or swim. The guy who played the teacher really sold the part and was pretty witty. It's funny to think that I found this movie at a Goodwill in Milwaukee, WI for $1.99.

If Wes Anderson made a movie about you and your friends in college...

[josephisuzu · 10/10 · 17 July 2008]

This would be it. Saw this flick in Austin and absolutely loved it. It was like a semblance of all my favorite memories from college, but executed a lot better than when it's you and five of your friends sitting around drinking and telling stories.

The comedy is dead on, and once it starts rolling, the laughter doesn't stop. But there's still enough story there to make you care. And the acting is sensational. I think I recognized one guy from TV, but other than that, it's all unknowns, and they are good. Especially the bit roles. Some of the funniest jokes belong to characters who are only in it for a few minutes, but that totally matches what college is like.

The first 10 minutes were a little slow, and are primarily comprised of introducing and establishing the main characters, but the film itself is better off because of that, and it kind of builds in pace in a very organic way that lends itself to the storytelling, whereas a lot of comedies (especially ones set in college) are more uneven and sort of go back and forth between the funnies and the serious stuff.

It's got the heart and the character of Bottle Rocket or Rushmore, but within the context and subject matter of Superbad or Swingers. And yet, it's completely original. And completely funny. The guys who made it were on tour with it driving around the country when we saw it, and hopefully they continue to take it around, cause this is a good little movie, and one that warrants a few watches (you'll wanna watch it at least twice).

If it comes to your town, GO SEE THIS MOVIE. I promise you'll laugh your ass off and then call all of your best friends and catch up while reminiscing some of the best years of your life.

Slacker & Dazed and Confused all rolled into one.

[cryback7 · 10/10 · 17 July 2008]

This film is funny. No doubt. But it also sort've lacks focus at times, which I personally dug, and feel that it's done intentionally to fit the storyline. It also goes hand in hand with the heavy emphasis on naturalism in this film. Life isn't focused the way that many film plots are. That's the trouble with a lot of coming of age movies; you have to fit all of the salient information into a package that doesn't lose the forest for the trees. The typical solution is to gloss over details and highlight key elements that should be easily recalled later. This movie had more of a "stream of consciousness" style, which I thought was refreshing. It felt like a "concept album" of sketches, and I liked that various subplots occurred just to add to the idea of the film rather than a preconceived chain of plot twists at the end that you could only have discovered had you found waldo or his walking stick in each shot.

The opening few scenes do a good job of drawing the viewer into the setting. And the opening steadicam shot really places you back at college. And it is indeed a maverick shot. Then we plunge into getting to know these characters, and I felt like I had a good handle on who each of the four main dudes were supposed to be by 10 minutes in. I also liked that we already begin to meet a ton of the peripheral characters, who end up only being around a scene or two, but make their time count with tons of laughs. As far as a reflection of college life, that makes sense. There were many people who seemed important at the time whose names I'll never recall. But I remember the time they drank a candle, or the time they climbed the dean's roof on acid and thought they were in the CIA.

The acting by the main dudes is solid. The preppier of the four (Nick) struck a good balance against the main two (Scott & Rennie). I liked his constant girlfriend drama, especially since she doesn't really even come into the film until quite a way through. We've all known that guy. He has the long term relationship, but it's really just out of comfort and complacency. I felt like he did a good job of fleshing out that role while remaining believable as one of the dudes. That's not easy to do in real life, nor can I imagine it to be that easy in a film. I enjoyed the maturation from obsession to casual flings as far as dating went. It reminded me of the way that many view relationships in general. In high school and shortly thereafter, people need confirmation of relationship status with hand holding or consistent verbal praise, but eventually move from that to relationships that are what they are.

For whatever reason, Rennie felt more like a pet than a person. And that's a good thing. He was so confident in front of the camera. He was so confident, I don't think he knew he was being filmed. He did a great job of putting wacky where it belonged. The cop bit was priceless. The constant moochery was only slightly outdone by the way that it was constantly enabled. This was a sharp picture of that guy we all lived with who managed to live with us for a year without paying a dime of his parents' money for anything but duraflame logs and sticky hands, but we would definitely take a bullet for him cause he's THAT guy. He's like a puppy that was just too cute to discipline when he was small, but now is too big to know any better. I'm also glad that his character didn't change much throughout the film, as it provided a fixed point to measure how the others did.

There were some good thematics towards the end that served to punctuate and then accentuate the loose wackiness of the bulk of the piece. And I really liked when that professor was smoking next to the no smoking sign. And I liked the Opus shirt under a sports jacket too. I viewed this as partially a critique of the plain vanilla "hollywood professor". And his words of wisdom, so true. That scene stayed with me. I also really liked that that the characters spoke over each other from time to time. It may be due to improv, but regardless, it makes the characters seem more human and real. Big thumbs up to the Random road trips too, those are an essential part of any college career.

All in all, this was a fun movie, and it really struck a chord with me because of how true to form it was. Makes me very nostalgic for college.

You have to hate life to not like this movie

[stevejapan4 · 10/10 · 21 July 2008]

It's rare that you find a movie that can make you laugh out loud 10-12 times before the credits roll. It's even rarer to find one that manages to you giggling inbetween those laughs, and also has enough of a story to make you look in the mirror and question more than your outfit. And for less than $70K? Fuget about it. The acting is strong. The film-making is stronger. And it doesn't look or feel like a low budget independent film. Not to mention the overall tone of the piece is just so dead on. It almost seems like they let this movie make itself to a certain extent. Like the ship was built, the course was set, but the captain was smart enough to let the wind do the steering and his sailors do the sailing. I don't know how to swim.

LOVE it

[jrgjones1 · 10/10 · 8 June 2009]

I absolutely loved this movie! I had never heard of it before my buddies and I watched it and we couldn't stop laughing. I'm fresh out of college and it made me want to go back and do it all over again...but better. The Marti Gras scene was awesome...had some great shots. I think it's a great showcase of what college is actually like but told in a humorous way. The situations the group gets into is so unique that Box Elder doesn't resemble just any other college humor type of movie. That shows the director has some real creativity, especially with the wit of some of the one-liners. I would recommend this movie to anyone who wants to reminisce on stupid moments of their own lives. I look forward to more movies like this one for sure.

Lacks everything that makes a movie

[nabp46 · 2/10 · 7 April 2011]

I've known about this movie for awhile, it was shot at my school when I went there and I even met the director in a film class I was in. But I never found myself shelling out the money to watch it or finding anyone else who had. Well thanks to Netflix I've finally had the opportunity to watch it. Sadly, I was greatly disappointed.

The script is very very very lazy. It skips around in different points in a approximate 2 year period. Never connecting the dots, Never telling a story really. So what you find is you have make up whats going on. Oh its a party now? Cool, what happened before this point in the movie? Doesn't matter you say? Oh... OK. Who the hell is this character? Why are they talking to him? If its supposed to make you ask this many questions then congrats, but i thought the story was suppose to take care of that. Its not that hard to establish a plot, introduce characters at the right time, and create a story that actually strings together.

After about 1 hour of jumping around different times of the year, I started to realize something. I don't care about these characters. How could I? I don't know anything about them except the character class placed on them(slacker, goofy, romantic stoner?), they seem like douches half the time, they don't seem to be striving or trying to go anywhere. This characters seems like a car set in neutral. Yah its cool to rev the engine and make some loud noises, but what's really cool, is when the car goes somewhere.

Here's an example of what i'm talking about. Around 1 hour into the movie, it is revealed that the main(?) characters long time girl friend slept with someone else. They only mentioned this girlfriend a couple times. The character confronts this girlfriend and its suppose to be serious. But it can't be because 1) This is the first time actually seeing this girlfriend, even though she lives close 2) You have no idea the feelings that they have, only the fact that "Hey this is my girlfriend" 3) Its never mentioned again. It could have never happened and the "story" could have gone on without a hitch.

The talking scenes are sometimes funny, which is a shame because thats all this movie is. Seems like the pacing and timing is never quite what the movie is going for.

The ending is as pointless as the rest of the movie and I only mention it because is seems like they tried to do something with it and have a serious moment. But in the end, they don't make a single point and it comes off irrelevant.

I don't understand what other people are saying about this movie. It has the emotion of a vegetable and the depth of a plastic kiddie pool. If it was going for an irrelevant take on college life, it succeeded in being irrelevant.

Saw this flick when it was touring around the mid-west - am very glad I went

[jeffroutine · 10/10 · 4 December 2008]

The guy that is heading up this tour, this is a film he made, when he was in college, for less than 70 grand. It's really honest, kind of like a Kicking and Screaming for the mumble-core generation. but A LOT funnier. As funny as Swingers, and close content-wise too. Like Swingers in college sort of. While the film definitely has it's ups and downs, the real reason to see it is for a performance by someone who I can easily see being the next Bill Murray. This actor's name is Alexander Rennie, and mark my words, this guy is the real deal.

The film has a ton of improv in it, and he is just so quick and deadpan and pretty much steals the show. There's this one scene at a Halloween party where he's so drunk he starts drinking a lit candle - it's absolutely hilarious.

All in all, it's a simple college take of four guy friends, going through their senior year, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. It's not super dramatic or super sappy, but really just an honest portrait of the director and his real life friends. If you're a fan of films like Funny Ha Ha or Hannah Takes The Stairs, it's well worth checking out. This is way funnier than those films though.

Living in Misery

[jmsxb · 10/10 · 19 July 2008]

When I saw the title for Box Elder, the low-budget, COMO-made comedy about college life at MU, I immediately expected a road trip flick about a search for the mythical Box Elder, MO from the Pavement song by the same name. I didn't get the road trip I expected, but what I did view was a surprisingly well-made film that Kevin Smith should have made years ago...had he grown up/attended college in COMO instead of New Jersey.

The film's opening shot follows Becker, played by Nick Renkoski, as he makes his way across campus. This single take won me over from the beginning. It was well-timed and executed to perfection, something that was unexpected from such a low-budget film. For all the accolades Kevin Smith has received for his films, he could have never pulled this scene off at the same point in his career. (Now, he can afford a director of cinematography to figure it out for him.) From there, the film follows Becker, Rennie (Alex Rennie), Brad (Chad?), and director/producer/lead dude, Todd Sklar as they traverse through their college careers at Mizzou. One-night stands, drunken tom-foolery, and a lot of sandwich consumption entails, hearkening back to the party films of the eighties such as Animal House, Porky's (entire trilogy), and Up the Creek. What Sklar's films has over those classics is more of a reliance on character development and dialogue as opposed to T&A.

BE was everything you'd want from a college comedy. There was drunken silliness and late-night rap sessions at the local diner (the Broadway Diner to be exact). There was a road trip (despite my earlier assertion) and sound advice from an adult confidant. The good guy even gets the girl (Laura as portrayed by Hina Abdullah) in the end...well, sort of, I think.

Due to the loosely written "script", much of the dialogue was juvenile and out for the cheap laugh. Although there were moments I thought maybe the subject matter would catch up with the overall sophistication of the production, it would suddenly plummet into a hole of pussy and dick jokes. Even Kevin Smith has succumbed to this trap from time to time, but he often tempers such sophomoric topics with an eloquence rarely found in mainstream cinema.

After the film, Sklar and some of his cast and crew entertained questions. Many of the questions were somewhat pointless and elicited minimal responses. I read way better questions and answers on The Bathysphere earlier in the week.

My question wasn't much better, but I have to take issue with Sklar's response. I asked about the presence of Pavement (the band) in his work. Besides the film's title, Sklar named his production company after a Pavement song ("Range Life"), used a Pavement song in the soundtrack (I've already forgotten which one, maybe "Summer Babe".), and thanked Stephen Malkmus in the credits, presumably for the use of the song.

Anyway, Sklar pointed to the band's music as his muse which makes total sense as one considers the stoner/slacker tone of the film. He then expressed his opinion that the band's music better described the present day than it did the time in which it was created, the early to mid-nineties.

I have to disagree. (Of course, this could my own sad attempt to hang on to my youth and the band that I feel most exemplifies that time.) I think that Sklar's college years, film, friends, etc. resemble that time better than they do the present. There seems to be this retro movement of the last 5-7 years in which kids are emulating the slacker, thrift-store outfitted style of the nineties. I wore a trucker hat in '93 and grew my first beard over ten years ago. It's funny to me how these aesthetics have returned to college campuses in the last decade. What's even funnier is how today's young adults (I'm sounding old and cranky again) have adopted this style as their own.

Regardless, the film was surprisingly good. I don't think it should be up for any Oscars, but it was entertaining. I look forward to what Sklar has in-store next. He claims that his next film will be better, but he wasn't ready to make it. Whenever he is ready to make his follow-up it should be better than Box Elder which bodes well for the young filmmaker.

Word

[amann-mann5 · 10/10 · 14 June 2009]

Seriously? This movie rocked. Hard. I saw it in Austin and felt like the boys from the cast had some real comedic talent. They portrayed "slacker-esque" to the max and line delivery was very smart. These guys have some real talent, it's hard to believe they are so young! I wish I could say I produced a movie like this as a twenty-something. I predict Box Elder will gain more exposure because I can see this movie being passed around and spread like wildfire between frat houses and college kids around the country. More than a coming of age story, it portrayed a group of dudes who are pretty confident in their lack of motivation and would rather involve themselves in shenanigans and frivolous fun than follow the rules and settle down. I also enjoyed the entire awkward "relationship" between the main female and the main guy. This is the reality of a college romance...that it's a pretty painful thing to experience but hilarity will definitely ensue. Grrrreat work.