Park is an unreleased film which has made the rounds at a more than few film
festivals (18 at least count!), to mixed reactions. If I had to sum it up in a
sentence, I would say it's the comedy version of Crash. Both are ensemble pieces
about a short period in Los Angeles, both involve interweaving and
interconnected stories. The one-word titles are even complementary. One is about
crashed cars, the tragic side of life; the other about parked cars, the comic
side.
There are five vehicles parked in an obscure hilltop park overlooking L.A. It's
not much of a park at all, basically just dirt roads, scrub brush, and few dried-out
picnic tables, but it has a great advantage for Angelenos who know about it.
It's just about the only place in the metropolitan area where one can escape
from the modern world. There are no strip malls, no conveniences, no gangs. It's
a place where people go to get away from other people. The five vehicles are:
(1) a small car with a young woman driver who has come there to kill herself;
(2) a pet grooming truck with a shy, nerdy driver and his sexy partner, upon
whom he has a predictable crush; (3) a smarmy lawyer who has come there for a
sexual assignation with the sexy pet groomer, unbeknownst to her shy partner;
(4) the lawyer's wife and her friend, who are spying on the unfaithful lawyer,
intending to teach him a lesson; (5) four young people who have come to eat
lunch, which the men would like to do naked.
The film starts out quirky, but makes a major tone shift near the middle,
switching from a cynical black comedy with offbeat characters to a sentimental
rom-com with typical situation comedy dialogue and predictable romantic
couplings with happy endings. I suppose the soft-hearted denouements were meant
to increase audience appeal, and the strategy seems to have worked since Park
won the audience award at two festivals. That's usually a sign of some
marketability, but the film has never been able to negotiate a theatrical run.
If you are not familiar with our grading system, you need to
read the
explanation, because the grading is not linear. For example, by
our definition, a
C is solid and a C+ is a VERY good movie. There are very few Bs
and As. Based on our descriptive system, this film is a:
